Underfunded, crumbling Michigan roadways continue to decline

An annual report from a Michigan transportation council shows that Michigan’s crumbling roadways are likely to worsen in the coming years due to lack of funding from the state, with the state’s economy suffering as a result.

The Transportation Asset Management Council releases yearly reports on road conditions and their 2010 update showed Michigan has an underfunded and rapidly deteriorating road system.

According to the Council’s website:

The Transportation Asset Management Council (TAMC) was established to expand the practice of asset management statewide to enhance the productivity of investing in Michigan’s roads and bridges. Part of the TAMC’s mission is to collect physical inventory and condition data on all roads and bridges in Michigan.

The report showed that out of all Michigan roads — highway, county and city — 35 percent were classified in the “poor” category, 46.9 percent in the “fair” category and only 18.1 percent of Michigan roads were classified as “good.” According to the Council’s projections for 2015, over 50 percent of all Michigan roads will fall under the “poor” category.

Michigan also has the highest percentage of “structurally deficient” roadway bridges among the Great Lakes states, with the number sitting at 13.15 percent.

After the 2010 report the Council concluded, “At current funding levels, the condition of Michigan’s transportation infrastructure will continue to rapidly deteriorate.”

Michigan has continually ranked in the bottom tier of states on road construction spending.

Not all roads are the same however, they can fall under three different categories.

According to information on the CRAM website, roads under the control of the Michigan Department of Transportation only make up eight percent of all roads. MDOT roads include freeways and major inter-county roads, if it has “M”, “US” or “I” in its name-it falls under MDOT’s jurisdiction. This leaves counties and cities largely responsible for their own roadways with 75 percent of roads being county roads and 17 percent being city or village roadways.

Monica Ware, PR Specialist for County Road Association of Michigan, the representative group to which Michigan’s eighty-three county road agencies belong, said, “Michigan’s roads are among the worst in the nation.”

“I believe that we have reached a tipping point where we can no longer wait to address the issue of transportation funding,” Ware said in an email to Michigan Messenger. “We will hit a point, if we have not already, where we will not be able to afford the cost of bringing all roads and bridges to a condition of good/fair.”

Here is how road funding works:

Michigan Public Act 51 spells out how state dollars are used on roadways. In the act there is the Michigan Transportation Fund which creates a funding “pot” from which all roads in the state receive funding.

The funding for the MTF is mainly generated through a 19 cent per gallon state fuel tax and vehicle registration fees. For the past three years, MTF revenues have declined about 4 percent each year. This can largely be attributed to the tax’s inability to keep up with inflation and the creation of more fuel efficient vehicles, as less gas purchased means less tax revenue for roads.

Act 51 also delegates how the revenues will be split amongst road jurisdictions, as CRAM explains:

According to the formula, money is first taken off the top of the MTF for a number of items including the Bridge Fund and public transportation. The formula then calls for 39.1 percent of the remaining money to go to county road commissions and 21.8 percent to go to cities and villages.

When it comes to federal funds, the 18.4-cent federal gas tax revenues are split between MDOT, counties and cities. MDOT receives 75 percent of the funding while the 83 county road agencies and 533 cities and villages get what is left of the 25 percent, which doesn’t amount to much.

In a time when Governor Snyder is trying to reinvent Michigan and create jobs, Ware says he can ill-afford to ignore Michigan’s struggling infrastructure.

“There is not sufficient funding to keep up with our aging infrastructure. There are already pockets of the state effectively closed off from heavy manufacturing and other sectors because of closed or weight restricted bridges,” said Ware. “A 2008 survey of corporate real estate executives conducted by Site Selection Magazine found transportation infrastructure ranked second on the list of top 10 factors to consider when determining where to locate or expand a business — transportation infrastructure was ranked above workforce skills, tax structures and incentives.”

Along with creating a better environment for job creating businesses, spending the right amount of money on roadways will save the state money.

The TAMC report stated from 2004 to 2010 46.5 percent of Michigan roadways deteriorated enough to drop them down a notch on the “good” to “poor” scale. Almost 50 percent of Michigan roadways were knocked down a notch whereas only 16 percent improved on the scale. The other 37.5 percent remained unchanged, mostly in the “fair” category.

“The goal of asset management is to no longer fix the “worst” roads first, but instead to apply the necessary preventative maintenance (the right-fix at the right-time) to keep roads from falling into a more expensive state of repair,” said Ware about the council. “It is cheaper to keep a road in good or fair condition than to fix it when it falls to poor condition. Every $1 invested in transportation today saves $6 later.”

The report released by TAMC drew similar conclusions, saying, “The cost of returning a poor road to good condition is four to five times greater than the cost of returning a fair road to good condition. Allowing more roads to reach poor condition will dramatically increase the cost of repairing Michigan’s road network. Unfortunately, the current trend is for more roads to lapse into a poor condition.”