County officials are bracing for a swath of deferred highway and transit projects when the state’s Consolidated Transportation Plan is released on Tuesday. File Photo.
Worcester County officials are scrambling for options — and money — after learning that state transportation officials are pausing a top transportation priority — the widening of Route 90 and the replacement of its two bridges.
Worcester is just one of the counties given tough news in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s release of a draft of the updated Consolidated Transportation Plan, the state’s six-year transportation plan.
“The way it was explained is they’re telling everybody to stop immediately wherever they are in the design process, the planning process, like hard stop,” said Worcester County Administrative Officer Weston S. Young. “It sounds like they’re heading towards a fiscal cliff with what their projections are now.”
Worcester County leaders were told the Route 90 project will be “paused” when the state releases its draft plan for fiscal years 2025-2030.
“Route 90 was the one that was mentioned. We don’t know of the other projects that they were proposing to do in Worcester, which ones are getting stalled as well,” said Young.
“We were told when the draft CTP comes out … it will have this project along with a whole bunch of projects throughout the state — I don’t know if the word is paused or deferred — because they can’t afford it based on their projections,” he said.
Young and Worcester County are not alone in the disappointing news. County leaders from around the state met with Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld and his staff during the four-day Maryland Association of Counties summer conference in Ocean City.
The news on the transportation front was not good.
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D). Photo by Danielle E. Gaines.
“It was not as bad as we thought,” said Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich. “You could say it another way: It was better than we thought, but it’s not good. I mean, basically, unless you’ve got a shovel in the ground, you’re not going to see money to put shovels in the ground.”
Elrich said it is not clear what projects will take a hit in Montgomery County.
“We didn’t get a list of specific projects,” he said. “Their basic message was, if there’s a shovel in the ground that we made an investment in, that funding is what we’re going to be able to continue. They may not be able to continue planning for a project.
“If you delay planning, you just further delay even the time you can put a shovel in the ground. It was pretty clear that even shovel-ready projects aren’t going in the ground with the amount of money they have,” Elrich said.
Maryland continues to struggle to find funding for road and transit projects. Gas taxes and other revenues that make up the Transportation Trust Fund lag behind a seemingly endless supply of projects.
In December, Gov. Wes Moore and Wiedefeld delivered dire news at the winter MACO convention in Cambridge: A $3.3 billion projected structural gap over six years between requests for transportation projects and available money meant tough cuts were coming and soon. Gobsmacked county leaders left Cambridge worried about priority road projects and funding for local transportation networks.
Requests for transportation projects — roads, bridges, sidewalks, and transit — always outpace federal, state, and local funding sources. That $3.3 billion estimate in December, while eye-popping, was always based on an unrealistic expectation that every jurisdiction would get every project over the six-year period. Multiple sources with knowledge of current fiscal projections say the shortfall this year is much closer to $1.3 billion.
Moore and the legislature added $150 million from the state’s rainy day fund to ease pressures on the transportation trust fund. The General Assembly also passed several targeted fee increases this spring meant to bolster the flagging fund, but the one-time infusion and targeted revenues were not expected to fully solve the issue.
I mean, basically, unless you’ve got a shovel in the ground, you’re not going to see money to put shovels in the ground.
– Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich
“The Maryland Department of Transportation continues to face significant budgetary challenges due to slow economic growth, which places downward pressure on transportation revenues, alongside increased costs for materials and labor,” Wiedefeld has said. “Last year, the Maryland Department of Transportation was able to balance the budget thanks to Gov. Moore’s one-time $150 million in funding and additional revenue sources passed by the General Assembly.”
A blue-ribbon panel is expected to meet this year to develop recommendations before the start of the 2025 legislative session.
Elrich that with the state worried “about the ability even to fund preliminary planning for projects, not knowing what the basis of funding is going to be,” the situation is “kind of what we expected.”
“You know, there’s no reason to believe that they suddenly saw a massive infusion of money into the state that would enable them to build the trust fund back up. So, you know, there are going to be efforts to put money into the trust fund, but it’s not going to be the trust fund that they thought they had,” Elrich said.
Wiedefeld said “stagnant economic growth combined with revenue forecasts for several important funding sources for the Department being revised downward leaves the Maryland Department of Transportation with limited state dollars to leverage federal funding for highway, transit, and aviation projects.”
“Despite these challenges, the Maryland Department of Transportation continues to prioritize safety, maintaining the current system for Maryland families and businesses and reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads,” Wiedefeld said.
Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld. Photo by Bryan P. Sears.
On Tuesday, county leaders will get their first look at a draft of the state’s Consolidated Transportation Plan. The document, updated annually, shows spending for projects in the pipeline and what will be funded over the next six years.
Wiedefeld and his staff then head out into the counties for feedback on what is most important to each jurisdiction.
In Worcester County, the Route 90 project remains their top priority.
“It’s one of multiple requests we’ve given the state,” Young said. “If we had to prioritize it, it’s our No. 1. Gov. Hogan helped get it started, but we’ve always known we were going to have to fight to keep it in. So, this news is disappointing.”
The highway and its bridges are nearly 50 years old. Worcester County officials want to “dualize” the highway and its bridges. An additional east and west traffic lane will likely mean replacing the existing spans over the St. Martin River and Assawoman Bay.
“I call it a Hail Mary project,” said Young. “It’s going to be really expensive for us. When you compare it to mass transit, it’s probably going to be a fraction of that, but it’s a big request for the county to have. But if you’ve heard any of our statistics, 8 million unique visitors every year. That road is used frequently, and when there’s an accident or like the sinkhole we had, or we need to get on or off the island for any reason, that is a choke point.”
Young and other county leaders said state officials did offer a ray of hope — projects that require a match to leverage federal aid might move forward. But to do so, already cash-strapped counties will have to come up with the match.
“For these types of projects, we don’t usually pay towards them,” Young said.
“So, we’re in an information gathering phase at this point, I would need to bring it to my commissioners,” Young said. We haven’t budgeted for this. We’re two months into our fiscal year ’25 budget. We would need to figure out how we would identify funding sources.”
It’s unclear how much of a match the counties would be required to contribute. Young thinks it could be as high as 25%.
“This is a new process for us,” he said. “We just want to know, is it 20%? Is it 25%? What’s the state’s estimated costs are in our match, and then would the commissioners be willing to prioritize that over something else?”
Young said there is also the concern that in picking up the match, it sets a precedent of shifting project costs to the counties that were previously paid for by the state.
“I’m a professional civil engineer. The bridge section is just, it’s going to be expensive. It’s not just expanding a road,” he said, adding that not finding the local funding may also be a poor option.
“There’s also the project doesn’t happen for a decade now because they stopped it,” he said.