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Utah Senate President John Valentine is working on a legislative deal he hopes will authorize a roughly $5 billion reconstruction of the Interstate 15 freeway through Utah County, he said Friday, but he is still working on getting buy-in from his House colleagues.
The plan would continue for the next 21 years to tap the Centennial Highway Fund, which was originally established in 1997 as an 11-year transportation kick start to build such projects as I-15 in Salt Lake County and the Legacy Highway in Davis County. The debt from those projects is nearly paid off.
With legislative authorization, the state could bond against the $190 million in positive cash flow it will generate next year and hundreds of millions more in the years that follow, said John Njord, executive director of Utah Department of Transportation.
Construction would begin in 2011 if UDOT gets authorization this legislative session, said Njord.
The latest construction cost estimate for the 43-mile capacity expansion from Sandy to Payson is $4.9 billion, but interest on the bonds would bring the total to about $7 billion, Njord said. Still, UDOT has identified it as its top priority statewide and looks forward to an agreement.
"This is really important to us," Njord said.
It's also a priority for Valentine, an Orem Republican who said his county is in line for the next big project. Utah County's projected population growth from 1992 through 2010 is 350,000, he said. Over the same period Salt Lake County has grown by 400,000 and Davis County by 175,000, but they already have gotten an I-15 rebuild and Legacy Parkway, respectively. Davis County also got new lanes on its stretch of I-15.
Valentine has worked to reach an agreement in both houses, but said there is no consensus about whether to build all at once or in phases. He prefers to do it all at once, and UDOT projects it's a six-year job.
"I don't want to have to be in construction in Utah County for 25 years," Valentine said.
House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, said building in phases would provide flexibility without "tying up" so much money for so many years. He wants to know more about how pumping that much money into one project will affect other planned roads, including the Mountain View freeway through western Salt Lake County.
"We need to know what will be - and what are [now] - some of the projects on the long-term plan, specifically Salt Lake County and the Mountain View corridor," he said.
Another consideration is how such a project would affect the state's constitutional bond limit, and possibly the ability to pay for road construction, like a northern extension of the Legacy Highway and projects to accommodate growth in Washington County, as well as non-road projects such as a Lake Powell water pipeline.
Curtis declined to sign off on the all-at-once plan for I-15, but said House leadership plans to invite UDOT representatives to meet with the Republican caucus this week.
The Centennial fund's earnings from now through 2030 will have enough to fund both I-15 and Mountain View with $3.1 billion to spare for other projects, Valentine said.
If the Utah County project is phased, UDOT project manager Merrell Jolley said the department recommends building first from American Fork to the junction with Highway 6. That phase would last four years and take care of some of the biggest needs, including extending an express lane that distance, rebuilding half of the interchanges and easing some of the worst congestion.
Overall, the plan adds two new lanes in each direction for most of the 43 miles. That means six lanes as far south as University Parkway, five lanes from there south to Highway 6, four lanes to Benjamin, and three lanes from there to Payson. The carpool lane that now runs only to University Parkway would extend to Spanish Fork.
When lawmakers created the Centennial fund they dedicated a nickel of gas taxes plus sales and other revenues to a list of highway needs. To date, it has funded more than $3 billion in roads.