John Dewar, the acting Delaware division head of the Federal Highway Administration, said Monday that an inter-agency “misunderstanding” helped cause the loss of up to $12 million in federal funds expected for Route 26 local roads expansion.
The FHWA indicated as far back as 2001 that federal funding would be available for the local roads portion of the Route 26 project, Delaware Department of Transportation spokesman Darrel Cole said. No documents, only verbal commitments, back that claim, he added.
FHWA officials recently told DelDOT that funds would not be available for the local roads portion because the local roads did not qualify for federal aid under federal regulations. Cole said that the current federal administration is “going by the books” while others in the past have offered more “leeway.”
“I guess there were different people here a year ago and there might have been some misunderstanding there,” said Dewar, the acting FHWA division administrator who has been with the agency since December. A long-time FHWA Delaware division administrator retired this spring. “It’s pretty clear to me that we can only go so far. It’s in the code of federal regulations.”
Federal code defines roads eligible for aid as “highways on the federal-aid highway systems and all other public roads not classified as local roads or rural minor collectors.”
Cole said that, because the roads would be used as a detour during the mainline project and because of leniency under previous FHWA Delaware administration, DelDOT expected federal funds to help cover the project.
Federal monies usually fund 80 percent of the state’s major roadway projects — and that 80 percent was expected for certain phases of the $21 million local roads expansion. DelDOT officials had originally planned, with the help of the federal funding, to expand to 11-foot travel lanes and add 5-foot shoulders on portions of four roads.
Expansion was expected on Burbage Road from Route 17 to Windmill Road; on Windmill from Route 26 to Central Avenue; on Central from Windmill to Beaver Dam and on Beaver Dam from Central to Muddy Neck Road.
Expected drainage improvements on those four roads might also be sacrificed because of the loss of funding. DelDOT officials had planned to use federal funds dedicated for the local roads for shoulder and drainage improvements, and land purchases.
Federal funding might still help improve some local intersections because the roads will be used as a detour route during Route 26 expansion, but the roads will not be expanded or improved as originally proposed using federal money, Cole said.
“We were under the assumption for the last several years that we could use federal money for the expansion. We will kind of have to go back to the drawing board,” Cole said. “We are going to do something. The good thing is we are moving forward and not saying that this is the end of the project.”
DelDOT might pull funds from other projects, scale back the local roads project or delay the 2008 start date to continue as originally planned, but an answer on that will not come until at least January of next year, Cole said. Officials do not currently expect the local roads situation to delay the 2009 or 2010 start date for the Route 26 mainline expansion project.
The “local roads” project is an offshoot of that larger mainline plan to expand Route 26 from the Assawoman Canal Bridge in Ocean View to St. George’s Church in unincorporated Clarksville.
The proposed end result would duplicate the road on the eastern, Bethany side of the canal, with 11-foot travel lanes, 5-foot shoulders and a 12-foot center left-turn lane. Right-turn lanes and signals would also be added at designated intersections.
DelDOT officials are still working to secure funding for the mainline project, which officials have estimated to cost about $44 million, Project Manager Tom Banez said.