Lessons Learned From $1 Billion in Transportation Stimulus Spending

MIAMI, May 25, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Florida's major metropolitan regions received more than $1 billion in stimulus funding for transportation projects over the past two years as the federal money poured into the state. In a new report, the Collins Center for Public Policy examined the expenditures and the lessons that can be drawn from that spending.

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Among the key observations in the report:

• Florida's practice of maintaining its roads and bridges made it possible to use most of its federal highway funding for new projects, rather than repairs to existing transportation infrastructure.
• It is essential that there be a component of transportation planning that provides road and transit links to serve entire regions.
• Florida has more Metropolitan Planning Organizations than any other state, and they are often too limited in authority and geography to have a regional impact.
• The "shovel-ready" mandate to quickly spend stimulus money tended to favor smaller, less controversial, lower-impact transit projects rather than the larger, more complex projects that could have greater impact on serving travel and shaping development.

The report's author, Robert Dunphy, is an instructor in the graduate real estate program at Georgetown University and a consultant specializing in sustainable transportation solutions. He established the transportation research program at the nonprofit Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C., which studies development and transportation trends.

"Adding a billion dollars in federal funds to Florida's major regions with the requirement that it be spent quickly represented a major challenge," Dunphy said. "Florida was able to take advantage of some good planning, combined with good fortune, to pay for important projects shelved because of a lack of state money."

The online report includes a map showing the major expenditures in the state's major metropolitan regions. It is the second in a series of Collins Center reports on stimulus funding and can be found at www.collinscenter.org.

The Collins Center established the Florida Stimulus Project (FSP) through grant funding from the Foundation to Promote an Open Society in partnership with the Open Society Institute in late 2009 to follow Florida's stimulus spending and engage the state's residents in the discussion. A report on stimulus health spending was published in October 2011; a third report is planned on stimulus education spending in Florida. 

"One of the important things that this study on transportation spending has helped us to do is to map those planning agencies and help determine how they might coordinate better with these present stimulus resources and beyond," said Dr. Leda M. Perez, the Collins Center's vice president overseeing the stimulus reports. 

The nonprofit Collins Center is independent, nonpartisan and dedicated to advancing the understanding of important public policy issues. In addition to traditional "think tank" programs that provide studies and analyses of key issues impacting our state, the Collins Center also turns these ideas and studies into concrete action.

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SOURCE Collins Center for Public Policy