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Stimulus update: 10,000 infrastructure projects in motion

House transportation leaders announced this week that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has resulted in 10,348 highway, transit and wastewater projects breaking ground. In addition, 5,700 more projects are in the works.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, chaired by Rep. James Oberstar, D-MN, has held 14 hearings to date on the progress of the act. The latest hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 23, dealt with the first full year of the program.

The stimulus set aside approximately $64.1 billion for transportation and infrastructure programs. Of that amount, $56 billion has been announced or is already in use, according to T&I Committee information.

Oberstar said the recovery act is resulting in improvements to 24,000 miles of roads and 1,100 bridges. The act created or sustained nearly 300,000 direct jobs and 938,000 indirect jobs, he said.

“Those are jobs that this committee has tabulated and calculated and accounted for. I don’t speak for the other committees, but we have 15 categories of reporting – all available on the committee Web site – that track these projects down to the millions of hours worked and job-hours created and sustained and total payroll of job-hours created,” Oberstar told the committee.

The $787 billion recovery act was one of President Obama’s first orders of business after taking office in early 2009. It also included bailout money for U.S. automakers and the financial sector.

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