With millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds that have to be spent this year, the R.I. Department of Transportation is gearing up to award funding for projects across the state.
DOT Director Michael P. Lewis recently sat down with Providence Business News on his first anniversary with the department to talk about how that stimulus money will be spent, how many jobs it will create and ways in which DOT is using new technology to connect with Rhode Islanders.
PBN: What will DOT’s share of the federal stimulus be?
LEWIS: Based on a formula that’s in the American Reinvestment and Recovery bill [which is now law] roughly mirroring the annual apportion to each of the states from the highway trust fund, it results in $137.1 million coming to Rhode Island.
Seifert Systems Invests in Energy Efficiency to Strengthen Operations
For manufacturers, energy is more than just another operating expense. It plays a critical role…
Learn More
PBN: In what length of time will that be spent?
LEWIS: That’s to be spent within the first year. And 50 percent of that money needs to be obligated in the first 120 days.
Now, we first got an inkling of the potential for some form of stimulus for infrastructure back in the early fall of last year – through our discussions with other states and by reading the tea leaves in the nightly news. Of course, in September of last year the economy was just going through its first machinations and the presidential election was very much an unresolved issue. … So we started to put together a program back in October, internally, to say, “What if the stimulus package does pass after the election or before the election?” We needed to be prepared to take advantage of it. …We started to look at all the programs we currently had in the works and what projects would be near completion. The term “shovel-ready” started to be thrown around in the fall, because it was a jobs program.
So we looked at the entire backlog of work that we had and started to come up with a list, which became fairly refined in early January, of the jobs that could be ready in the first quarter of 2009.
PBN: This will add $137.1 million to this year’s DOT spending, but Gov. Donald L. Carcieri’s blue-ribbon committee had recommended annual spending of at least $285 million more than is currently spent to fix the state’s infrastructure.
LEWIS: It was $285 million, but for round numbers, we could say it was $300 million more than we spend on an annual basis. That was for 10 years and just to get our existing infrastructure into a state of good repair. That’s not about building new highways, new alignments or new transit facilities.
If you look at that over 10 years, that’s a $3 billion deficit. So $137 million is less than 5 percent of what our overall need is. It’s a great shot in the arm, but in no way does it solve all the infrastructure needs of the state. Nor does the stimulus do that for the entire country.
PBN:LEWIS: Can you give me a sense of what’s first on the list for Rhode Island’s infrastructure spending?
LEWIS: What we wanted to do is get as much competition in the industry as we could. So we wanted to make sure it was geographically diverse, in that whatever money we were going to get would be distributed around the state. We also wanted to get the money to as many different types of contractors and craft labor as possible, to get more people to work. … With Rhode Island being one the states with the dubious distinction of double-digit unemployment, this was really important. The construction industry was one of the hardest hit in terms of unemployment.
We have a large group of paving jobs; but we also have bridge repairs; safety projects, including guardrail replacement, traffic signal replacements, traffic signal upgrades; some drainage prevention; landscaping work and line-striping work. We have projects that run the gamut and they’re relatively smaller dollar values, so many of the smaller contractors are able to bid on these projects. It’s not just the big, heavy, civil contractors that handle a lot of our big bridge work and big highway work.
PBN: Have you estimated how many DOT and private employees will be hired?
LEWIS: There’s a fairly simple model that’s used nationally. Using that, we anticipate that the $137 million should produce about 1,500 direct construction jobs in the field. So this is laborers, ironworkers, truck drivers, construction-type jobs. And, beyond that … about 3,500 indirect jobs – suppliers, vendors.
I think a good example of that is the first job we’ve awarded a contract to: the resurfacing of Route 138 in Tiverton. The governor held a press conference [and] we signed a contract with D’Ambra Construction. That is a $2.4 million job and, according to [D’Ambra President] Michael D’Ambra, it will bring about 32 people off of unemployment.
PBN: DOT has joined Twitter and Facebook. Why are those media important?
LEWIS: One of the big lessons that I learned up at the Big Dig in Boston is that getting information out to the traveling public in the most efficient and broadest way is as important as the work itself, in a way. As we are in this transition phase that’s been going on for the last decade – with huge growth of the Internet and these new tools for exchanging information – these are ways that are exponentially growing in how people are getting information.
The traditional way to put out information is that a [department of public works] or DOT would notify the public by placing an ad in a newspaper. The number of people that you’re capturing with that notice is going down and down and down. So this new generation that’s coming up gets their information in a new way – my kids, for example, don’t open a newspaper. They get their information off their cell phones or off their laptops. And that generation is moving on – the [people] that started with that technology are now in their 20s and 30s. •
INTERVIEW
Michael P. Lewis
POSITION: Director of R.I. Department of Transportation
BACKGROUND: In public service since 1984, Lewis worked in the Massachusetts Highway Department for six years. He then went to Boston to work for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority on the Big Dig, eventually becoming director of design, deputy project director and, in 2000, project director. When the Big Dig was completed in 2007, he came to Rhode Island.
EDUCATION: B.S. in civil engineering, University of Vermont, 1983. Additional coursework at McGill University in Montreal.
FIRST JOB: As a junior in high school, Lewis was a busboy at Dirty Harry’s restaurant in New Jersey.
RESIDENCE: Scituate, Mass.
AGE: 47
