WASHINGTON — In two weeks, local transportation projects, including work to expand Interstate 66, could grind to a halt if Congress does not come up with additional federal highway funding, Virginia’s transportation secretary warns.
Aubrey Layne told the Commonwealth Transportation Board on Wednesday that U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx sees a short-term extension beyond July 31 as the most likely outcome, which would at least keep projects underway this summer moving forward.
“It still represents a pretty significant threat,” Layne says. “We’ve been doing this for the last year; we’ve got contingency plans. It’s obviously August, we don’t want to stop construction.”
The House has passed an extension that would keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent into December, while Senate leaders are still hoping for a longer-term deal.
Layne warns that yet another in a string of more than two dozen short-term extensions would still put projects at risk.
“Over the next few months, if in fact something is not resolved or there was a slowdown, I can see that impacting our development of projects, and I think one that comes to mind would be 66,” Layne says.
That is because there would likely be a struggle to finance the project either publicly or through a public-private partnership because of limits on the loans the federal Department of Transportation could offer.
Negotiations over long-term bills in Congress are largely based on how to pay for the reauthorization.
“It needs to be sustainable, multimodal; it’s got to talk about additional dollars,” Layne says of new money.
