MOVING AMERICA To Jobs . . . To Homes . . . To Market By WILLIAM T. SUNLEY, Engineer of Local Roads and Streets

The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) was signed by the President on December 18, 1991. The new Highway Bill covers a 6 year period. Since December, a lot of discussions have occurred to interpret the Act. The Illinois Department of Transportation has reviewed the Act and has determined the following items pertain to local governments.

Safety Program — Rail-highway safety (RR-Hwy) and Hazard Elimination Safety (HES) will continue under the same guidelines as the past bill. The funding level will remain the same as the past, $3.9 million annually for local agencies. This level of funding remains the same through FY 97. Eligible projects for RR-Hwy must have deficient crossing surface, inadequate signals or signing, or deficient approach roadway. HES projects must have a high number of accidents that can be reduced with a minimal improvement.

Bridge Program — This program had the largest increase in funding over the past bill. Under this program an average of $15.7 million annually will be distributed to the district offices by the percentage of square foot of needs for bridges in their district. The district office will then allot to the local agencies their share of the bridge funds. The bridge program continues with the same guidelines as the Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Program (BRRP). This funding can be spent on city, county, and township structures that are 20 feet in length and are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. In addition, an average of $15.7 million annually will be set up for major bridges for state and local bridges. Local agencies will be able to compete for this special category of bridge funding. Guidelines have not been established for major bridges for locals, but this will probably be for bridges with cost greater than $1.0 million.

Surface Transportation Program (STP) — This program is a new program that replaces several of the old programs such as Federal-aid Secondary (FAS), Federal-aid Primary (FAP), and Federal-Aid Urban (FAU). Funds from this program must be spent on roads with a functional classification of collector or greater. The rural funding will average $19.9 million annually. These funds are allotted to the counties based on population, square miles of land area, and total miles of rural roads.

The urban funding of the program will average $70.4 million annually. These funds will be allotted by percentage of population to the urban areas with a population greater than 5,000.

There are a few other programs in the new ISTEA program that only pertains to a few areas of the state. One of these programs is Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality. This will be utilized in the Chicago-Cook County urbanized area and East St. Louis urbanized area. These projects will be designed to lower the air pollutants in these urbanized areas. Demonstration Projects are itemized projects that are noted in the ISTEA for funding. The last funding is Forest High-

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ways Projects which only deals with prefects in the Shawnee National Forest.

The new matching ratio is 80% federal and 20% local on all the above except Demonstration Projects which varies and Forest Highways Projects which are 100% federal. The matching ratio for most highway projects under the old bill was 75-25.

If funding for the ISTEA act is not restricted by congress between FY 92-FY 97, the local agencies will see a more than 23% increase over the old bill. This may vary depending on the increase and decrease in population. Also the benefit of the 80-20 matching ratio will help the state and local agencies stretch their tax dollars for more projects. These projects will help create jobs, make travel to and from home more enjoyable, and to improve our routes to market. •

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