With Severely Reduced Traffic And Toll Projections, Officials Question The Scale And Cost Of Route 301

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I first saw this Middletown Transcript story on Andye Daley's facebook wall last night with her comment ~ Bhatt: New traffic estimates will mean delay for Route 301 project

I hate to say I told you so... but, this is exactly what we have been saying for years !!!!!!!! We do not have the traffic to substantiate the revenue to pay the debt service on this project!!!!!!! And finally, the DOT is agreeing.....out loud!

Then this Washington Post story with more comment ~ New traffic projection study upsets financing plan for US 301 road project in Delaware

Patrick Daley Looks like the numbers that we gleaned from the original origins and destination study

And I finally read through (News Journal) Melissa Nann Burke's piece today with my comment rescue ~

DelDOT has had a citizen's group led by Andye Daley telling them this for the last seven years. Organized as the Middletown Corridor Coalition, the message has been loud and clear - using the agencies own numbers - that this project could never pay for itself as agency officials continued to insist. MCC knew better. Read it here - http://delawareway.blogspot.com/search/label/MCC

Diminished projections raise doubts for U.S. 301 plan

DOVER — In another setback for the extension of U.S. 301, deep cuts in the projections for traffic and toll receipts are raising questions about how Dela­ware will finance the project without the state kicking in $50 million to $100 million more than ex­pected.........The new projections could also delay construction by six months and scuttle Delaware’s bid for a $193 million low-cost federal loan – expected to cover a third of the cost of the 14.5-mile main­line, state officials said Friday. “It’s now very clear that this road won’t pay for itself,” Trans­portation Secretary Shailen Bhatt said. “I still believe the road will get built. The question is when and how.”.........The agency already borrowed $125 million in bonds in 2009 to pay for roughly $79 million in right-of-way purchases, preliminary engineering and utility work, under a program that allows the debt to be repaid with federal highway money. Construction is estimat­ed at $400 million.

.........Larry Tarabicos, a land-use attorney who represents the Whitehall development partly in the path of 301, said the reduced traffic projec­tions “make no sense” considering the growth planned for southern New Castle County. “This is the most dis­appointing news that I’ve heard in a long time,” he said. “It’s not about mov­ing existing traffic. It’s about spurring economic development. That’s cer­tainly something we need now. There’s a need to de­velop jobs – one way to do that is to build 301.”

In recent years, Del­DOT consultant Stantec had cut projected activ­ity along the proposed highway from earlier es­timates, due in part to the economic downturn and the trend of people gener­ally driving less nation­wide. This summer, Bhatt sought a second opinion. Traffic and economic models employed by the New York-based firm Ja­cobs forecast that only 5,233 vehicles a day would use the toll road when it opens – a steep de­parture from Stantec’s 2009 estimate of 14,800 vehicles a day and 2011 projection of nearly 9,000 vehicles a day. Jacobs also projected that, after 40 years, traf­fic on the toll road will have grown by only 1,200 vehicles a day to 6,400.........[Bhatt] noted that investors will consider the figures when judging whether tolls generated by traffic would be sufficient back­ing for bond sales at fa­vorable interest rates..........“This is a road that has a purpose and need. The question is how do we fund it?” Bhatt said. “Maybe we don’t fund it now. Maybe it’s a future secretary of transporta­tion who makes this deci­sion to move ahead. But there’s a lot of economic development that has been talked about in this area, and if you talk to some of those folks, they say, you know, we’re counting on this.” Other options include reducing the scope of the project to perhaps a two­lane truck route or a shorter mainline, Bhatt said. He’ll consult with the General Assembly, as well as with stakehold­ers, developers and the construction community.

Read more of Andye's work HERE ~ http://deldot.gov/information/projects/us301/pdfs/mcc_020907ppt.pdf

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