The Maine Department of Transportation recently released the latest edition of its Three-Year Work Plan, which covers 2020 through 2022 and highlights planning initiatives, maintenance and operations activities, capital projects and programs, and administrative functions.
The plan includes 2,051 items totaling $2.59 billion.
Costs have increased since the 2019 edition of the plan, but higher costs will yield lower levels of production. This is attributed to several factors, including workforce challenges and work constraints.
“This fiscal challenge required us to prioritize even more and rely on less-reliable bond and competitive federal grant funding for basic needs,” Commissioner Bruce Van Note said. “With lower levels of capital project production, we are focusing on essential safety needs, bridges, matching federal funds, and low cost patching of higher-priority roads until normal treatments become fiscally possible. The reality is that we are now competently managing a slow decline of our transportation system until bipartisan funding solutions materialize. The system will not fail immediately, and we will do our best to avoid any serious safety impacts, but holding actions only work for a short time, and the reliability of the system will suffer.”
The state once spread capital projects over two years but has increased it to three years to stay within funding and cost constraints.