Roll out the (orange) barrels: Federal funds to help speed up Utah road repairs

As President Barack Obama pushed state governors Tuesday to spend federal stimulus money as quickly as possible, Utah officials say they are already ahead of most states in the cash-out game.

Utah Department of Transportation officials say federal stimulus guidelines require half of a state's road construction money to be "obligated" within 120 days.

"But we have already obligated 64 percent of the $149.5 million we're getting" ($96.5 million) in federal stimulus cash, said UDOT spokesman Nile Easton. All told, Utah will have 56 road projects paid for with the federal money and see construction all over the state. All of the federal projects must be finished within three years.

Utah's portion of the $878 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is $1.7 billion. Of that amount, $213 will be spent on transportation projects. The rest of Utah's federal stimulus funds will go to Medicaid, special education, education of underprivileged students, crime and justice programs, unemployment insurance and early childhood intervention programs.

UDOT will receive the bulk of the transportation money — $149.5 million. The remainder will end up in the hands of regional transportation planning groups, such as the Wasatch Front Regional Council.

Currently, UDOT is advertising the projects to potential contractors through newspaper legal notices, e-mail and its Web site. Interested contractors are preparing their bids, creating a pool from which UDOT will select contractors based mostly on cost, with the cheapest bid winning the contract, Easton said.

By the end of March, 18 road bids will be opened and awarded for projects funded by federal cash, he said. By the end of May, all of Utah's federal stimulus money will be out for bid, which would make Utah the first state to accomplish that, Easton added.

"By June, all of these should be under way," he said of the 18 projects.

Drivers should expect to see plenty of orange construction barrels this summer.

"We already have just over $1 billion worth of work in the state, and then you have these projects on top of that," Easton said.

The Wasatch Front Regional Council is the largest regional planning organization for roads, representing 60 percent of the state's population and covering Weber, Salt Lake, Davis, Morgan and Tooele counties. It will receive nearly $50 million in federal stimulus money — $25 million for local projects in Salt Lake County and $23 million for local projects in Weber and Davis counties.