By CARA LORELLO
Staff Reporter
In April, Gov. Christine Gregoire certified 71 transportation projects throughout Washington state eligible for a total of $70.7 million in federal stimulus funding. The list encompasses four state highway projects, 55 local projects and 12 transit projects.
Certification means that projects have undergone all required legal reviews and represent an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars as specified in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Included among the local state highway projects is a centerline rumble strip installation in Medical Lake along the entire route of SR-902 from the Medical Lake/I-90 interchange to the interchange at Salnave Road.
Estimated costs for the project are $42,000, according to Washington State Department of Transportation, and all but $1,000 of that amount is being covered by ARRA funds.
WSDOT Eastern Region communications manager, Al Gilson said rumble strips wouldn't be added to any city streets, and wouldn't require any big interruptions in local traffic flow.
It would be my thought that we would exclude the low speed segments within the city of Medical Lake,” Gilson said in an April 24 interview via e-mail.
Rumble strips, also known as audio tactile profiled markings, are road safety features used to reduce the risk of crossover collisions by alerting inattentive or aggressive drivers. Contact with car wheels creates a tactile vibration and audible rumbling. According to the WSDOT official website, 18 percent of all crashes in the state are single vehicle run-off-the-road crashes, but they account for 30 percent of all the fatal crashes on highways. Some research shows rumble strips are a cost-effective means of reducing accidents.
The project is currently not yet up for bid, Gilson added, so a start date for installation isn't known at this time, though rumble strip jobs typically don't take too long for crews to complete.
“It's a pretty fast moving job. Depending on the contractor or the job, you can do about two miles in an hour,” Gilson said.
To date, Gov. Gregoire has certified 212 total transportation projects with the federal funding representing more than two-thirds of the total project budget of $101.3 million.
Gregoire said in an April press release that stimulus funds for the projects approved “will create and save jobs, and contribute to economic recovery across Washington.”
“I'm proud of the job our state and local agencies are doing to move quickly — and responsibly — to select shovel-ready projects that use stimulus funds exactly as intended by President Obama and Congress,” Gregoire said.
Overall, Washington state expects to receive approximately $5 billion from the federal stimulus package to modernize infrastructure, enhance energy independence, expand educational opportunities, increase access to health care and provide tax relief.
In administering these funds, state and federal officials will combine oversight to help ensure taxpayer dollars aren't wasted, and hold governments accountable for results. At the state level, Gov. Gregoire created a web site, www.recovery.wa.gov, which shows where tax dollars are going. On the federal level, President Barack Obama has appointed Vice President Joe Biden to oversee each state's recovery efforts and to root out waste and fraud.
Additional information is available at http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/funding/stimulus.
Cara Lorello can be reached at [email protected]
Reader Comments(0)