Going "on offense." That's how Maine Department of Transportation Commissioner Bruce Van Note describes the work plan unveiled Thursday.
It shows where the state plans to spend $4.74 billion over the next three years. Boosting that number is federal funding made available by the 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Van Note also says the legislature finally agreed to supplement the gas tax with revenue from other state sources. It adds up to the largest transportation spending package ever.
Most of it, $2.7 billion, will be spent on roads and bridges. But about $1 billion will go to what's called "multimodal" forms of transportation like trains, buses, bicycle and pedestrian trails.
The state will also be able to continue its downtown and village grant program. Localities can apply for money to build sidewalks, install crosswalks, install lighting and generally make village centers and downtowns more attractive. Van Note says these are places where you should be "designing for human scale, not vehicular scale."
In recent years, some increased transportation funding has bumped up against construction cost increases and material shortages that prevented the state from doing all the transportation work it outlined.
Van Note says while construction still costs more now, "I don't want to let the math be a downer. This is really good news. We can do things that we've never been able to do before."
