SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois will have $5 billion of road construction under way in the next fiscal year, officials said Thursday in presenting the state’s long-term highway improvement plan.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois will have $5 billion of road construction under way in the next fiscal year, officials said Thursday in presenting the state’s long-term highway improvement plan. Transportation Secretary Gary Hannig said the road work, funded with a combination of mostly state and federal money, with carryovers from previous years, will include $2.5 billion in new projects for the budget year that begins July 1. Just two years ago, the total amount was less than $3 billion, Hannig said. The six-year plan will create 167,000 jobs and total $12.8 billion, according to the Transportation Department. More than 40 percent of the total will be for maintaining existing roads, with 22 percent for bridge maintenance and 25 percent for relieving congestion. Among the bigger projects beginning in earnest is a long-anticipated bridge over the Mississippi River near East St. Louis into St. Louis. The $409 million project includes $156 million in fiscal year 2011 for an archaeological survey, land acquisition, retaining walls, construction or rehabilitation of interchanges and other structures and other work. The $12.8 billion plan represents a 14 percent increase over the previous one. That total includes $7.29 billion in federal highway funds. "In Illinois, we’re the center of our country," Gov. Pat Quinn said in his state Capitol office. "Our country is built upon getting people where they have to go as quickly as possible and as safely as possible," The state’s contribution to the plan gets a 60 percent funding bump from a long-awaited public works program the General Assembly approved last year. Money for the construction comes from video poker, higher driver’s license fees and increased liquor taxes. The last six-year plan included $3.1 billion in state funds. The new one amounts to $4.8 billion in state money, with more than half of that coming from the public works program. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
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