Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) plans a five-year investment in infrastructure, Gov. Tom Wolf said Monday in his budget proposal.
The plans include the repair of more than 1,100 miles of rural and low-volume roadways and 85 to 100 locally owned bridges. Rural roadways are those defined as having fewer than 3,000 vehicles a day.
“These investments build on the Road Maintenance and Preservation Program (Road MaP) that we started last year to increase effort on not only major routes, but also lower traffic roadways across the state,” Wolf said. “We will leverage partnerships with local governments and private industry to bring targeted and much-needed improvements.”
Roadways will receive $200 million from the Rural Commercial Routes program. Cost-sharing partnerships with heavy hauling industries also will be expanded under the program.
Several programs will fund bridge repair including Road MaP. Funds will be available to counties that collected the $5 vehicle registration fee established in the state’s 2013 transportation plan.
There are more than 6,500 locally owned bridges in the state and 30.7 percent are structurally deficient. This compares to 12.2 percent of state-owned bridges.
Since January 2015, 1,600 locally owned bridges have been repaired or rebuilt, and $7.5 billion was awarded in bridge and roadway contracts.