Money could flow to these ‘shovel-ready’ road projects

Metro Atlanta officials are closing in on a list of transportation projects slated for the first chunk of federal stimulus dollars, and they span the region.

If the projects in the draft list look familiar, that’s because they were already approved in the region’s regular transportation budget but were slated to be cut before the federal funds became available. In metro Atlanta, at least, the transportation stimulus will probably be less like Santa Claus and more of a guardian angel.

From building a new four-lane extension of McGinnis Ferry Road in Gwinnett County to repaving part of the Downtown Connector and I-75, a tentative list of metro projects obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows work that would pave cracked asphalt, make driving and walking safer and in a few cases relieve traffic jams. Officials stressed that the list, totaling $202 million, is a work in progress and likely to change.

Officials also do not yet know how many jobs the projects would create.

It’s also just a first phase. The state is under a June 30 deadline to pick projects for its first round of stimulus money and will have a year to decide on another list for the rest.

The $787 billion federal stimulus spending is supposed to pump money into the faltering U.S. economy fast. So the first priority is to produce jobs and paychecks, not congestion relief.

The projects that rose to the top were the ones that create jobs and are “shovel-ready.” In transportation, re-paving or repair projects most often fit that bill, and will probably take up more than half the money. Road-widening projects can take longer to prepare, and there will be fewer of them.

A state Department of Transportation spokesman, David Spear, said drivers would likely see road crews and traffic barrels hit the street starting in May.

“We have at least a tentative sense of relief,” said Brian Allen, director of transportation for Gwinnett County, which landed several hefty projects on the pending list. “Like everybody else, we’ll feel a whole lot better once we see them [bid out contracts for] construction.”

Even after slicing $4.4 billion out of metro Atlanta’s long-term transportation list in late 2007, the region was going to take another big whack. Inflation, outdated project cost estimates and accounting troubles at the DOT had combined again to make the region’s total to-do list too expensive for the money at hand. The ARC was preparing to cut the project list for the next four years by as much as $400 million worth of projects, said ARC’s transportation planning chief, Jane Hayse.

Regional officials don’t know if the stimulus will be enough to keep the entire road budget intact. “We just don’t know just yet,” Hayse said. “But we’re going to do everything we can.”

The DOT is deciding metro Atlanta’s list with the ARC. Like ARC officials, DOT spokesman David Spear emphasized that all lists now are tentative.

“Those are decisions we’re going to have to make, the [DOT] board in concert with the governor and the commissioner,” Spear said. He added that in order to create more jobs in more areas, officials were gravitating toward many smaller projects across the state, rather than “three or four $200 million projects that consume the entire stimulus package.”

The list did not include MARTA projects. The transit agency is still working on a list with ARC, Hayse said.

Georgia is expecting about $1.1 billion in transportation stimulus money. ARC gets $119 million of that and will spend it all in metro Atlanta; the DOT gets about $624 million in road money for the entire state, including metro areas.

Another $144 million will go to mass transit systems in the state, including MARTA.