On April 17, 2013, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) released the FY 2014-19 Proposed Multimodal Transportation Improvement Program, its annual update of the five-year highway transportation program. As a component of that program, IDOT plans for $9.5 billion in highway spending over the next five years. According to IDOT, funding for the highway program will come from the following sources:

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Note: "Pay-as-you-go" refers to revenue raised annually from the motor fuel tax, vehicle registration fees, and other sources. Pay-as-you-go revenues fund current spending. In contrast, the Illinois Jobs Now! capital program refers to bonds issued by the State. While those bond proceeds also finance current spending, they must be repaid over time with interest. Illinois Jobs Now! identifies a number of revenue sources to cover this debt service.

Comparing the current multiyear highway program to its two immediate predecessors, the FY 2012-17 program and the FY 2013-18 program, the current program demonstrates the increasing importance of federal revenues as the Jump Start and Illinois Jobs Now! state capital programs come to their conclusion. While these capital programs provided some 20 percent of funding in the FY 2012-17 program, they make up only six percent of the current FY 2014-19 program. Correspondingly, the federal share of the multiyear highway program has grown from 62 percent in the FY 2012-17 program to 71 percent in the FY 2013-18 program and now 76 percent in the FY 2014-19 program.

The FY 2014-19 program narrative does not provide a great deal of detail on its project evaluation and selection process, although it includes a more thorough description than previous multiyear highway programs. For example, the program includes a description of the Condition Rating Survey process for evaluating pavement conditions. However, the narrative does not specifically describe how IDOT's various goals are weighted or how IDOT makes tradeoffs among competing goals. CMAP has called for a performance-based approach to project selection that explicitly links performance data to funding decisions.

IDOT District 1, which includes Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will Counties, is expected to receive $3,125,663,000 -- approximately 45 percent of the total $7 billion state highway program (the remaining $2.6 billion of the multiyear program is dedicated to local roads and streets). This share is consistent with the longstanding "55/45 Split," a non-statutory agreement that directs only 45 percent of state highway funds to northeastern Illinois regardless of needs or system performance.

The FY 2014-19 highway program advances many projects identified in GO TO 2040, such as a new managed lane on I-55, the construction of an interchange between I-57 and I-294, improvements to the Circle Interchange, and the Elgin-O'Hare Western Access project. The highway program also includes the I-80 add lanes project, albeit with larger project boundaries than those identified in the GO TO 2040 plan. The FY 2014-19 highway program budgets $92.3 million for the Illiana Expressway project, including $21.3 million in FY 2014 for engineering and land acquisition. GO TO 2040 does not include the Illiana project as a fiscally constrained major capital project, although it does permit Phase I engineering to better define the project.

GO TO 2040 supports a sustainable, robust investment in our transportation system and the application of transparent performance-based criteria to prioritize projects. IDOT's FY 2014-19 program emphasizes the waning resources of the most recent state capital programs, but does not fully describe the decision-making process that defined the evaluation and selection of projects for funding. CMAP believes these two issues should be front and center as decision-makers develop transportation policy for the state.