PennDOT’s February Construction Lettings = $119 Million

The state Department of Transportation (PennDOT) bid out just over $119 million in projects in February bring the year-to-date total to $185.6 million.  PennDOT finished the 2010 calendar year with approximately $2.2 billion in lettings but has forecast that 2011 will only see $1.7 billion, which was the level of the program back in 2006-07.  The department said this decrease is largely due to the expiration of the federal Economic Stimulus payments as well as a decrease in state funding and stagnet federal funding.  To put into perspective, PennDOT’s lettings were $2.8 billion in 2009 due to the billion dollars in economic stimulus funds. Read more

ReConnectPA.org launches public engagement effort

PHIA is pleased to join Associated Pennsylvania Constructors and a myriad of other organizations representing transportation interests in a venture called ReConnectPA.org.

The site is a tool for reaching out and engaging the public in seeking solutions to Pennsylvania’s transportation funding problems. The home page of the ReConnectPA.org web site contains an interactive map of Pennsylvania, on which anyone can post a suggestion for improving the transportation system or identify a transportation-related problem. Read more

POSTPONED: U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Comes to PA

PHIA Vice President Thomas Lawson was invited by the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to be a part of a special committee “listening session” to discuss the deep transportation funding problem in Pennsylvania. The committee is coming to Pennsylvania in conjunction with PA congressmen Patrick Meehan, Bill Shuster, Jim Gerlach, and Lou Barletta.

The meetings have been postponed due to pending votes by Congress in Washington. PHIA will provide new details when they become available.
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Some Pa. commuters waste nearly a workweek and $1,000 per year in traffic

Last week, we provided a national overview of the 2010 Urban Mobility Report, issued by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. The report calculated the amounts of time and money that are wasted because of traffic congestion – an average of 34 hours and $808 per motorist per year, based on 2009 data.

The report also broke out individual urban areas, in Pennsylvania’s case, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Allentown/Bethlehem. Following are the data for those areas: Read more

Adequate transportation program would add 50,000 jobs in PA

An adequately funded transportation program would add more than 50,000 jobs to the Pennsylvania economy, lowering the state’s unemployment by nearly 10 percent, according to an economic study commissioned by Associated Pennsylvania Constructors.
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