Are you driving on bad bridges? Kansas is getting $45 million to help locals fix that.
Jason Alatidd, Topeka Capital-Journal
5 min read
Kansas transportation officials want to help local governments pay for repairs to bridges.
"This is really to address what I consider one of the big issues that will be coming to our state in the coming decades, and that is the backlog of bridges on the local system that will need to be addressed," said Calvin Reed, acting secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation.
"Just as a reminder, Kansas is fourth in the nation with almost 25,000 bridges, 80% of those bridges are owned by our local partners, and the funding that they have to be able to address their critical bridge needs is obviously competing with other needs in their communities."
Bridge inspection data show 58 of the 563 bridges in Shawnee County are in need of repair or corrective action. The U.S. Department of Transportation rates 14 as poor; 16 are structurally deficient.
Statewide, nearly 2,700 of the about 25,000 bridges are in need of repair or corrective action. About 1,300 are rated as poor with about 2,000 structurally deficient.
A Topeka Metro bus drives across S.W. 15th Street bridge over the Shunganunga Creek. Although structurally sound, the bridge was flagged as one of 59 needing repairs because of its width and traffic count. Federal funding will help local governments repair or replace deteriorating bridges.
Through a new federal program in the bipartisan infrastructure law, Kansas has been allocated $45 million a year to address bridges. State officials decided the best way to spend the money is on local bridges.
But local officials won't actually get the federal money, Reed said. Instead, KDOT is doing an internal funds swap, with the state agency using the federal money on state-owned bridges while displacing an equal amount of state funds to go to the local bridge improvement program.
By eliminating the federalism component, "it will be easier for our local partners to administer those state funds," Reed said. There is a matching funds requirement using a sliding scale, where "counties with fewer population have less to match," and the match can account for counties taking deteriorating bridges off the transportation system instead of repairing or replacing them.
KDOT provides update on IKE goals
Reed also told lawmakers that KDOT is on target to meet various funding requirements imposed by the Legislature.
In terms of modernization and expansion projects, nothing is yet under construction in northwest and north-central Kansas, while the northeast region has already surpassed its minimum funding goal with projects currently under construction.
"One of my concerns with having a rolling pipeline is that areas of the state would not be served, so I'm hoping you can alleviate that concern," said Rep. Troy Waymaster, R-Bunker Hill and chair of the Legislative Budget Committee.
The northeast region has $521 million in modernization and expansion projects currently under construction, compared to a minimum investment by 2025 of $220 million. Reed pointed to a single $504 million project on US-69 in Johnson County.
"There was really no way to break that project down into smaller chunks and still deliver it," Reed said. "So that is why there is that imbalance."
For northwest and north-central Kansas, KDOT has projects that are set to be let this year. Waymaster acknowledged the minimums for those areas would be met by 2025.
"There's always some comments made on the (House) floor when we're talking about money going out to western Kansas," Waymaster said. "A particular representative in Johnson County doesn't particularly like that when that happens, and I would probably express the same thing that I see $300 million more than the minimum investment going to Johnson County."
Four-lane highway in southern Kansas isn't in the works
Acting Kansas Department of Transportation Secretary Calvin Reed answered questions from legislators about transportation projects.
During the gubernatorial campaign last year, Republican nominee Derek Schmidt proposed an ambitious transportation project: a four-lane highway crossing the southern portion of the state.
The idea called for connecting Garden City and Liberal in southwest Kansas to Wichita via US-400 and US-54, then to Baxter Springs near the Missouri border and the connection to Interstate 44. While no such plan is in the works, KDOT has invested in smaller priority projects along the route.
Rep. Kyle Hoffman, R-Coldwater, said on US-54 between Pratt and Liberal: "All of those projects are passing lanes. Have we given up the idea of four lanes in that area?"
"I would say no," Reed said. "I think the passing lanes are really a mechanism to get us to what we can get accomplished in this program. I would say it would be really challenging within the budget constraints of this program to be able to deliver on an entire four lane through there. So we're trying to address the critical issues with the passing lanes right now, which are obviously much less expensive."
Hoffman said the passing lanes are "needed big time," but wondered if converting them to four lanes could eventually be in the plan.
"We continually evaluate our corridors to identify what the best strategies are for them," Reed said, "and obviously we have to evaluate that in context of reality, what our constraints are and what the needs are across the entire state."
Inflation adds to cost of highway projects
Inflation has added about 40% onto the cost of road construction projects in recent years, though inflation is leveling off.
"It absolutely has eroded the spending capacity of the money in the highway system," Reed said.
But that has been offset by KDOT receiving more federal funds than anticipated and higher than expected sales tax revenue — which legislative staff said was largely due to inflation, Hoffman called it "Biden economics at its best."
"We are still prepared and projecting to deliver what the original scope of the IKE program was," Reed said. "It's just going to be more expensive than what we had originally envisioned. ... We're are not anticipating cutting projects because revenues have stayed ahead or even with inflation."
Jason Alatidd is a statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at jtidd@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jason_Alatidd.
