Subcommittee hears counties, cities say local road and bridge funding falls short as federal mandate raises costs

At a meeting of the Appropriations - Transportation subcommittee on state and local transportation, representatives from the County Road Association and the Michigan Municipal League told lawmakers that local roads and bridges face growing maintenance backlogs and new federally driven data and engineering requirements that will increase costs for counties and municipalities.

The testimony outlined the size of the local system, the main funding streams that support it, and a multi-year shortfall to meet both maintenance and federal reporting mandates — with presenters asking the Legislature to consider targeted state funding to help local governments meet the new workload.

Ed Noyola, representing the County Road Association, said counties are responsible for about 90,000 miles of road while municipalities have roughly 22,000 miles and the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) about 10,000 miles, a split the presenters summarized as about 75 percent county, 17 percent municipal and 8 percent state. Noyola said counties oversee 5,868 county bridges — roughly 52 percent of all state bridges — and cited MDOT Bureau of Bridges and Structures data that show about $1 billion in closed, critical, serious or weight-restricted bridges statewide.

Denise Donahue, chief executive officer of the County Road Association, told the committee that typical bridge useful life is assumed to be 50 years and that recent project assumptions increase replacement deck area by…