ROAD NETWORK UPGRADE FOR PENNSYLVANIA
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) has announced a $2 billion program to upgrade the state’s road network over the next ten years.
Governor of Pennsylvania Tom Wolf announced plans for PennDOT to invest significantly more in major highways and rural roads in the next decade. The roadway maintenance and highway and bridge capital projects will be funded through its new Road Maintenance and Preservation (Road MaP) program.
Old roads need repair
We’ve made significant progress on our road network including roadway and bridge needs and the Road MaP program will amplify our efforts statewide,†said Governor Wolf. We’re bringing an even bigger focus to our interstates and to the lower-volume roads where many Pennsylvanians live and work.
We’re well aware that many Pennsylvanians are dealing with very old roads that sorely need repairs, and Road MaP is one way that we’re going to fix our connections within communities and to other states, said PennDOT Secretary Leslie Richards. With this initiative we’re telling our customers that we’re using these new investments to better maintain and preserve our massive roadway system is the fifth-largest in the country.
Road MaP addresses large needs on the 40,000 PennDOT-maintained miles. Specifically, the Interstate program will address the issue of more than half of the state Interstates being out of cycle for reconstruction, which should be considered every 40 years. Of the 2,691 department-maintained Interstate bridges, nearly 40 percent have exceeded their original 50-year design life and 44 of them are older than 65 years.
In addition, of the roughly 18,000 miles of PennDOT-owned, low-volume roadways, 24 percent haven’t had structural resurfacing in more than 20 years. Of the PennDOT-maintained roads that are Interstates or on the National Highway System, 27 percent are rated as “poor†on the International Roughness Index, which rates pavement smoothness.
The department estimates that Interstate road network reconstruction costs roughly $2.6 million per lane mile, or $5.2 million if the segment mile
of Interstate has two lanes. Resurfacing one mile of two lanes of interstate in one direction of travel costs roughly $1 million. On lower-volume roads, per-mile costs are roughly $24,700 to seal coat, $101,400 to resurface and $910,000 to rehabilitate.
