Beshear calls for frugal road projects

State highway engineer Gilbert Newman recently stopped at a country store and told a surprised clerk that a bypass was planned for the area.

“Why,” the woman responded. “We don't have any traffic.”

It's these kinds of projects — bypasses in areas with no congestion and four-lane roads for areas with little traffic — that Newman and the state Transportation Cabinet say need to be eliminated or scaled back.

In a news conference Monday, Transportation Cabinet officials unveiled an initiative to cut the fat out of road projects and save the state money without sacrificing safety. All planned state projects — about 600 — will be examined to see if they can be pared down, Newman said.

Gov. Steve Beshear said the initiative, dubbed “Practical Solutions,” will help the state's limited transportation dollars go further, although no savings goals have been set.

The state had budgeted $2.16 billion for the Transportation Cabinet this fiscal year, but officials said Monday that they expect a shortfall in both state and federal funding, in part because of high gas prices.

If Congress does not appropriate more money to the federal highway program, the state could lose at least $190 million in road funds, Newman said.

Besides scaling back projects with unneeded bells and whistles, the cabinet will do more to keep contractors to original cost estimates and will also increase competition by allowing concrete contractors to bid on road projects, state officials said Monday. In recent years, asphalt has been used on most Kentucky roads.

Beshear and Cabinet Secretary Joe Prather stopped short of saying which projects will be scaled back.

Two Louisville bridge projects will be part of the review, but Beshear and Prather said it was too early to say how those projects might be changed. Transportation officials did say that a bridge project in Murray — which was slated to cost upwards of $300 million — would probably be pared down after state transportation officials discovered that the bridge was bigger than what local officials said was needed.

The state maintains 26,000 miles of roads, but 46 percent of the traffic fatalities in Kentucky are on 6,000 miles of those roads.

With limited road dollars, the state needs to do more with less, Prather said. It costs much less to pave and expand a two-lane highway than to build a four-lane highway.

“It's an initiative that makes sense,” Prather said in an interview before the news conference. “People who like to design roads like to design a showplace but it doesn't necessarily make traffic move better or make a road safer.”

Monday's announcement comes as the FBI is investigating the cabinet's road contracting process during the administration of former Gov. Ernie Fletcher. To date, no one has been charged.

Prather said the announcement was not in response to the FBI investigation. The initiative has been in the works since Beshear took office in January, he said.

The Transportation Cabinet has provided fodder for scandal for decades. Former governors have pledged to reform the way the transportation cabinet does business but had limited success.

Beshear said the changes announced Monday are long overdue.

“This cabinet has been a cesspool of cronyism and inefficiencies,” Beshear said. “Decisions have been made here based on political considerations.”

One problem that has dogged the transportation cabinet and driven up costs is the lack of competition for road contracts. Many of those contracts were way over the cabinet's own estimates of what the project would cost, transportation records show.

By allowing concrete contractors to bid on projects, competition will increase and costs will go down, Newman said.

Charles Lovorn, executive director of the Kentucky Association of Highway Contractors, said contractors have no problem with the new design rules, adding that contractors will build whatever transportation officials order.

The state's budget crunch has already affected the industry, he said. “We've had layoffs.”