Legislative Study of State Bridge Grant Funding for Local Bridges

The 1999 legislature requested the Commissioner of Transportation to conduct a study of the "State Bridge Grant Program" in order to assess the effect of implementing a proposed expansion of the current eligibility criteria that is applied to all local requests for state bond funds for bridge replacement and rehabilitation. Specifically, the law required a study assessing the impact on the demand for state bridge grants that would likely result from expanding the eligibility criteria of the existing program to include the following:

1. Allowing grants to be used for the costs of flood-related erosion protection;
2. Allowing grants to be used for construction of water-retention projects where such a project is more cost efficient than replacement of an existing bridge;
3. Allowing grants to be made for bridges that are functionally obsolete; and
4. Allowing grants to be used for construction of bridges on new alignments.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the extent to which the demand for state bond funds will increase for each of the distinct eligibility criteria under consideration. This is achieved by first examining the demand for local bridge bond funds under the current eligibility criteria, and then by projecting additional needs that would likely result in the current biennium and the next biennium if the program were expanded to include the criteria listed above.