What is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act?

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was passed by Congress on February 13, and signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009, in response to a deepening recession in the United States economy. The Recovery Act expressed three immediate goals:

1. To create new jobs as well as save existing ones
2. To spur economic activity and invest in long-term economic growth, and
3. To foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending

The Act made available $288 billion in tax cuts and benefits, $224 billion in increased federal spending for programs such as education, health care and unemployment benefits, and $275 billion for federal contracts, grants and loans. It is from this latter category that Alaska received funds for transportation projects.

From the national allocations in the act, the State of Alaska received approximately $300,000,000 for transportation related projects. This included $175,000,000 for state-funded highway and bridge projects; $82,500,000 for airport projects of which $2,500,000 was granted to Merrill Field in Anchorage, $5,000,000 to Kenai Municipal Airport and the remainder to DOT for state-operated airports; and $41,600,000 for transit projects, of which $32,500,000 was granted directly to Anchorage, Fairbanks and the Alaska Railroad, and $9,100,000 to DOT for transit projects throughout Alaska. A key provision of the Act was to fund “shovel-ready” projects that could go to construction during the 2009 building season.

The Department of Transportation and Public Facilities has worked diligently to ensure that the “use it or lose it” provisions of the Act were met by getting bid-ready projects to construction in 2009. Over $170,000,000 has been contracted for projects in 2009, including almost $91,000,000 in highway and bridge projects, $73,370,000 for airport projects and $9,100,000 for transit projects. These funds are being used to rehabilitate highways and bridges from Ketchikan to Kotzebue, to improve and construct airports, to build local transit facilities and purchase vans and buses for local transit agencies and construct bus stops and bus shelters, all of which contribute to employment while improving the state’s overall transportation infrastructure.

We hope you will find this site to be a useful source of information about DOT’s Recovery Act projects. The Project Map provides easy-to-read descriptions of Recovery Act projects around the state. Employment Tables document the role of these projects in the state’s economy. All of the information on the site is updated regularly to provide an accurate point-in-time portrayal of federal Recovery Act funds at work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information: dot.econstim.info@alaska.gov