Which state DOTs are moving the highway stimulus money out fastest? Who's the slowest? Rankings from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee are out, and Wyoming is Number One--it has 95% of its American Recovery and Reinvestment Act highway funds under contract and 94.9% of that money is for projects on which work actually has begun.
Ranking last--51st, because the list includes the District of Columbia--is Hawaii. It has 36.3% of its ARRA road money under contract and only 3.4% of its total stimulus highway allotment in projects that have gotten started.
To see where your state ranks, see:
http://transportation.house.gov/singlepages/singlepages.aspx?NewsID=852
Then scroll down to: State Ranking of Highway Formula Funds Implementation.]
Along with the state rankings, which the House "T&I" committee released Sept. 2, the panel also issued an update of ARRA highway and transit funding overall. It shows that DOTs and local transit agencies continue to make progress in getting their road and transit stimulus money out. As of July 31, the panel reports, 6,831 projects, worth a total of $20.1 billion, were out for bid. Those totals include 5,173 projects, valued at $13.5 billion, were under contract. Of those under contract, 4,087 projects worth $10.8 billion were under construction.
Those totals represent big jumps from the numbers in the previous committee report, which showed the status as of June 30. The number of projects out for bid on July 31 is up 34% from the 5,079 in that category a month earlier. The number under contract is up 46% and the projects under way have climbed 62%.
What about jobs? The committee says that the highway and transit projects have created or preserved more than 76,000 "direct, on-project" jobs, plus "tens of thousands of indirect and induced jobs,"--for example, at construction materials and equipment companies.
