Idaho Transportation Department outlines construction surge, bonding and maintenance needs in annual report

Scott Stokes, director of the Idaho Transportation Department, presented the department’s annual report to the Senate Transportation Committee, detailing accomplishments, operations and the governor’s budget recommendations. “Our vision statement is enhancing the quality of life through transportation,” Stokes said, summarizing ITD’s mission and recent work.

Stokes described a recent acceleration of project contracting that began after the Transportation Expansion and Congestion Mitigation (TECM) funding stream started in 2022. He said that $80 million in annual sales-tax transfers for TECM has enabled bonding that will yield roughly $1.3 billion in bond proceeds for highway projects; ITD expects to sell a remaining bond issuance of about $340 million to $350 million shortly. Since the 2022 bonding began, ITD has placed roughly $3 billion of projects under contract, Stokes said.

Stokes reviewed performance and scale: ITD manages more than 12,000 lane miles of highway and more than 1,800 bridges, paid about $966 million in construction and engineering last year, and carried out about 3.7 million DMV transactions. Stokes told the committee ITD currently reports about 86% of pavement in good or fair condition and around 81% of bridges in good or fair condition; he said the department shifted some pavement funding to bridges to improve bridge conditions after multiyear declines.

On workforce and operations, Stokes said ITD faces retention challenges. He said the department has roughly 450 maintenance workers and has lost about 75–80 maintenance employees per year on average for the last three years. Entry pay for maintenance begins at about $18.55 per hour; ITD proposes raising pay steps by about $2.50 per hour to reduce turnover and retain institutional knowledge.

Stokes reviewed other operational highlights: 32 backcountry airstrips maintained by ITD, more than 60 community airports supported through the aeronautics division, 128 roadway monitors that feed winter-storm and pavement-condition data, and innovations such as a tire-anomaly classification (TAC) system at ports of entry that has identified about 6,000 trucks with poor tires. He highlighted maintenance workloads for 2024: plows treated over 2.8 million miles of road, crews striped some 14,000 lane miles, removed 3,000 trees, filled 30,000 hours of potholes and repaired 26,000 linear feet of guardrail.

On the governor’s budget, Stokes said the administration proposes a 3% increase in the strategic initiatives fund—bringing it to $312 million—and an additional $50 million in sales-tax transfers to support a new round of bonding. Stokes also described line items including a $9.68 million request for site improvements and design work to relocate ITD’s District 4 administrative office closer to Twin Falls and a proposal to replace two heavy rotary snowplows (Stokes said one such machine costs roughly $700,000). Stokes asked the committee for continued support to accelerate project delivery and to address pay and equipment needs.

Committee members asked for comparative year-to-year numbers and asked staff to provide more detailed line-item fiscal-year comparisons. Several senators expressed concern about retaining engineers and maintenance staff and asked for follow-up detail on the proposed pay increases and the District 4 relocation request. Stokes said the relocation request would not move maintenance crews that are geographically positioned in Shoshone but would move district administrative functions closer to population centers.

Stokes concluded by thanking committee members and ITD staff and said the department expects a year of record project completions ahead.