October 4, 2024
By Lane Kimble
MADISON, Wis. — The next 12 months bring the opportunity to work on around 400 new projects and the potential for a massive 67-mile freeway expansion to get the green light.
Meanwhile, there’s a significant transportation budget hole and a general election that may shakeup the Wisconsin Legislature for the first time in 15 years.
So, is the glass half full or half empty headed into 2025?
“We’ve got big things to do in the near term and the long term. We can do it because we’ve got you working with us,” WTBA Executive Director Steve Baas told the crowd.
Half full it is.
About 150 people packed a conference room Thursday at Monona Terrace Convention Center in Madison for WTBA’s annual Fall Meeting.
The all-day event featured a welcome from new WisDOT Secretary-Designee Kristina Boardman, a look at projected lets and quantities for FY2025, a “fireside chat” with Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, and a deep dive into the transportation system’s funding challenges and potential solutions.
“We need each other and I just want to say a heartfelt thank you,” Division of Transportation System Development Administrator Rebecca Burkel said.
View the 2024 WTBA Fall Meeting Photo Gallery HERE
“For this last fiscal year, we had awarded close to 350 projects… and that’s a lot. This fiscal year we’re going into an even heavier number.”
Still, WisDOT’s projected quantities show asphalt, concrete, excavation, and base course levels likely coming in below the five-year average.
Division of Transportation Investment Management Administrator Justin Shell noted those projections do not take into account locally let opportunities, such as the Local Road Improvement Program (LRIP) and the one-time $150 million Agricultural Roads Improvement Program (ARIP), both of which WisDOT is working to consolidate data into a centralized and public format in the coming years.
“I think that’s going to tell a richer story about what’s happening out there,” Shell said.
FALL MEETING SLIDE DECKS:
In the afternoon, Jason Stein and Tyler Byrnes from the independent Wisconsin Policy Forum shared initial findings from WPF’s deep dive into the state’s transportation system and funding.
Their report pointed to good progress being made in improving the state’s backbone highways while the quality of local roads has fallen. Supplements and/or replacements for a stagnant gas tax–which Wisconsin lawmakers stopped from indexing for inflation in 2006–are needed to help the state keep up with the vast need for road work, Stein and Byrnes said.
The report and the information-packed Fall Meeting as a whole left Baas encouraging attendees to stay thirsty and engaged, working to fill that half-full glass even higher.
“We’ve got to do a better job of reminding people about the fundamental, basic, foundational role that the roads and the infrastructure system that you guys are responsible for designing, building and maintaining have in everybody’s lives,” Baas said.
“At the end of the day: for this state, for its economy, for their daily lives–though they don’t often think of it this way–it all begins and ends with a road.”
NOTE: Fall Meeting attendees will receive PDF versions of presenter slide decks starting Friday, Oct. 4. WTBA will share the decks with those unable to attend in the coming weeks via the Weekly Update.
