by Blake Herzog
The $28 million Gov. Doug Ducey pledged during January’s State of the State address to accelerate the widening of Interstate 10’s Gila River Bridge did not make it into the budget he signed into law at the end of March. It wasn’t the only project cut.
The $11.8-billion spending plan adopted just before Ducey issued a stay-at-home order for the state was half a billion less than what Ducey proposed at the beginning of the year, with revenues plunging from the pandemic while some aid packages were added for struggling residents and businesses.
The pandemic was especially bad news for costly transportation projects, said Eric Anderson, executive director for the Maricopa Association of Governments, with the bridge’s replacement and widening not included “along with a number of other projects.”
The money Ducey pledged would have been the last piece to fully funding the bridge, with the rest of the $78 million coming from federal sources. Construction was expected to start by mid-2021.
The timetable for widening the entire segment, which crosses the Gila River Indian Community, was still undetermined, awaiting final negotiations with the tribe and roughly $300 million in funding for a project projected to cost between $500 million and $600 million.
MAG still has $135 million set aside for the widening, which will fund the Maricopa County portion of the segment, Anderson said. The Arizona Department of Transportation allocated another $50 million within its five-year spending plan, but that could be in jeopardy, Anderson told members of the Pinal Partnership during its virtual annual meeting in June.
The ADOT governing board won’t make any final decisions on whether to change anything in its five-year plan until this fall, Anderson said.
“This gives ADOT time to get some more revenue data and convene an expert panel to discuss assumptions and revise the official projections,” he said.
He did add that the I-10 project is probably among the state’s highest transportation funding priorities. The 26 miles on the Gila River tribal land between Casa Grande and Sun Lakes is now the only segment between Phoenix and Tucson that isn’t at least six lanes wide and is considered one of the most dangerous stretches.
Ducey said in January about 62,000 people drive over the Gila River bridge every day.
