Despite increased federal funding, overall program trends downward
By Rebekah Morris for Arizona Builder’s Exchange
Don’t hit the panic button yet: most of the drop in the Arizona Department of Transportation’s State Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP) budget is due to a change in reporting. Accounting for that change, overall funding continues to decline in total allocation.
For the five years AZBEX has been tracking the STIP, we have seen a steady decline in total funding. In years 2013, 2014 and 2015, we saw declines of about $100M-$150M. Last year the decline slowed quite a bit to only $20M. We were hopeful that this year we’d see an overall increase in the five-year total. Alas, that was not meant to be.
Rather, the data shows a $900M hit, or a 17% reduction in the program total.
