For the second year in a row, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s administration is proposing to delay expansion of the heavily congested American Legion Bridge and other infrastructure projects because of a transportation budget shortfall of over a billion dollars, according to a new spending plan released Tuesday.
But a slow state economy, exacerbated by inflation and high construction costs, has limited Moore’s ability to act on his vision or even to fully maintain the current network of state highways.
The state’s plan cuts $1.3 billion over the next six years for a total transportation project budget of $19 billion. Transportation Secretary Paul J. Wiedefeld said that along with rising costs, the state can no longer rely on pandemic relief funds. The cost of building the Purple Line train project in the D.C. suburbs and maintaining existing infrastructure couldn’t be covered with declining gas, transit and vehicle registration revenue, officials said.
Last year, economic pressures forced the state to put off any new construction for transportation projects. Tuesday’s proposal suggests delaying planning for new projects as well, and replacing outdated buses with diesel or hybrid buses rather than electric vehicles.
“Literally, the dollars aren’t there,” Wiedefeld told reporters last week in advance of the plan’s release.
Virginia is set to open expanded toll roads on its side of the Beltway next year, but they will come up against a narrower road in Maryland at the American Legion Bridge. Moore wants to expand that portion of the highway with bus and bicycle access if the money is available to do it.
But “given the stress that we’re under, we’re going to have to focus purely … on structural issues with the bridge itself,” Wiedefeld said. Any other repairs necessary for safety reasons will also stay, he said.
The bridge delay is painful for many Montgomery County commuters stuck daily at the Beltway choke point.
“We literally can’t afford to kick this can down the road any further,” said Rich Parsons, vice chair of the Suburban Maryland Transportation Alliance. “It makes no sense in the long term. This bridge has got to be replaced and everybody knows it; this bridge is at the end of its life span. Dragging out the replacement is only going to raise the cost.”
Safety improvements for the intersection of Georgia Avenue and the Beltway are also slated for delay, as is widening Interstates 15 and 81 in Western Maryland, improving light rail tracks and Baltimore Metro stations, and planning for expanded public transportation networks. The bridges in Baltimore where I-695 and I-70 meet would be repaired but not expanded.
The plan would require changes in state law, removing requirements to buy electric buses and fully fund “good repair” of transit networks.
Much of the lost money is actually federal, officials said, because the state can’t afford to put up the funds that would unlock federal dollars. Officials said that money could still be sought down the line, while acknowledging that the outcome of the presidential election could also impact how much federal transportation money Maryland gets.
Moore has committed to a goal of making the state carbon neutral by 2035. But as bus systems across the country go electric, they are dealing with high costs and underdeveloped supply chains. Wiedefeld said that it costs twice as much to buy an electric bus, and that even if the money were available the buses are not — factors that also led to the District recently killing its Circulator bus system.
Officials also said they do not expect public transit ridership to return to pre-pandemic levels in the next six years, or possibly ever.
Some major projects are too far along to delay, Wiedefeld said, including the Purple Line, a new Frederick Douglass Tunnel for passenger rail, expansion of the Howard Street Tunnel for freight trains and better access to the coming FBI headquarters in Greenbelt. The state is also still competing for federal money to fund its revived plans for the Baltimore Red Line, which started out as a subway project but is now aboveground light rail. Funding for the Metro system remains unchanged, as does support for county roads.
“We’re still delivering a lot of things in terms of services and capital projects, but we can’t get as much as we wanted to,” Wiedefeld said.
Rebuilding of the Francis Scott Key Bridge will also continue; the state selected a contractor for the first phase of the project last week. The federal government is expected to cover at least 90 percent of the cost of the new bridge, with reimbursement coming from the insurance company of the ship that triggered the bridge’s collapse.
The state is not proposing cuts to operating costs for the state’s transportation network, about $3.3 billion a year.
The budget is not final; it has to be presented to every locality in the state and approved by the state legislature. Last year, Moore ended up using $150 million from the state’s “rainy day fund” to avoid some cuts to road repair, transit and other transportation projects. The state legislature also raised some fees earlier this year, including on electric vehicles, in order to prevent more drastic cuts.
Without those moves, “it would have been a much worse situation,” said Del. Marc Korman (D-Montgomery), chair of the House Environment and Transportation Committee. But he and other lawmakers said some difficult decisions are necessary — either higher taxes and fees or fewer commitments. Moore has said he has a “very high bar” for imposing tax increases, given Maryland’s high cost of living and struggling economy.
This plan “does raise red flags” about the state’s ability to build “many of the construction projects we need to move us forward,” House Appropriations Chair Ben Barnes (D-Prince George’s) said.
