Keep up the good work, Ohio

Yesterday I wrote about how the stimulus has helped Sloan Construction grow its business down in Duncan, South Carolina. Today, I opened up the paper and saw even more good news about our economic recovery out of Ohio.

The AP's Matt Leingang reports this morning that:

"President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package for the nation meant 1,138 highway construction jobs created or continued in Ohio in July, the first full month that figures were available to the state."

That’s exactly what the Recovery Act was intended to do – rebuild America, put people back to work and get our economy moving again.

Governor Strickland has done a terrific job of getting money out the door and putting people back to work in Ohio. Already, $578.7 million in Recovery Act money has been made available for more than 228 transportation projects in the Buckeye State.

All around the country we’re seeing signs of an economic recovery. On Monday, Senator Specter and I broke ground on a Recovery Act project in Elizabethtown, PA. Yesterday brought news that Sloan Construction in Duncan, South Carolina, would be opening a new plant to keep pace with its new construction work. And today has brought great news about job creation in Ohio.

The DOT is committed to keeping this stimulus momentum going. Every day we’re working hard to get our economy back on track now by creating jobs in communities across America, while building the infrastructure needed to support a 21st century economy.

Comments

[Kevin]

The new jobs are good news. However, Ohio is not investing its transportation stimulus dollars wisely. State policies have long favored rural areas over metropolitan areas, Ohio's economic engines. The stimulus investments continued this trend. In addition, Ohio is one of only five states to allocate the majority of its transportation stimulus funds to new construction, instead of maintaining existing infrastructure. These decisions will perpetuate urban sprawl and other unsustainable practices, when the state could have been promoting meaningful change. This is a missed opportunity for Ohio.

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2009/06/ohio_needs_more_investment_in.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/us/09projects.html
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/06/mayor_frank_jackson_questions.html
http://blog.smartgrowthamerica.org/2009/06/29/120-days-in-sga-reviews-the-stimulus-spending-on-transportation/

[Michael E. Bailey]

The economic recovery is having great and positive impacts across the country, including California, that, however, is not keeping some from rushing to judgement that the economy is not only failing but getting worse. The Orange County Transportation Authority has decided things will be worse next year than this year without knowing the positive impact of stimulus spending and job growth. According to a Board of Directors presentation on August 24, 2009, they want to further reduce bus service hours by another 300,000 by June 2010. They are reducing bus service by 100,000 hours next month. They say how expensive ACCESS paratransit for disabled persons is; but their own information says it costs $113.27 an hour to operate a fixed route bus but $56.41 an hour for ACCESS; cost per service mile for fixed route buses is $9.11 for ACCESS $3.68. They are talking about eliminating entire routes again by June 2010 including nearly every route in south Orange County on a potential elimination list. The impact of route eliminations in south County would be to strand disabled persons without transportation since ACCESS is pegged to the fixed route buses. Elimination of bus routes means elimination of ACCESS service along those routes. A lot of people who use the bus to get to work will switch to less fuel efficient more polluting means of transportation of the fixed route buses are made to hard to use. The economic recovery funding is just now kicking in and because of that we can still be hopeful that by June next year elimination of most all bus routes in south Orange County will not take place. Best wishes, Michael E. Bailey.