County Commission | The Magazine August 2018 | Page 17

FROM THE COVER
q PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE: ROADS & BRIDGES r
County leaders are steadfast advocates
T
here was a time when it was
fairly accurate to refer to
members of the county governing
body as “road commissioners,”
and although that era is quickly
receding from view, local roads and
bridges remain among the 67 county
commissions’ biggest responsibilities.
The history of Alabama’s county
roads is highlighted by three game-
changing funding initiatives, and
county leaders are hard at work to
add another one to that list in the
near future.
Farm-to-Market Roads Act
Gov. Chauncey Sparks and his
administration deserve credit for
pushing the Farm-to-Market Act,
which set aside a penny of the state
gas tax for local roads and bridges. It
was a 50-50 matching program, and
Elmore County completed the first
project – paving a 10-mile stretch
from Slapout north to the county line
– in 1943.
Work under this program began
in earnest after the end of World War
II, which may explain why the next
man to call the governor’s mansion
home gets much of the glory. The
goal was to convert 6,700 miles –
100 miles per county – of frequently
muddy dirt roads to hard surfaces in
just 10 years.
Within a decade of full operation,
the program had hit the mark: 6,801
miles paved and 114,388 linear feet of
new bridge structures. The penny-per-
gallon funding continued for another
dozen years.
GARVEE Bonds Bridge Program
In the late 1990s, ACCA and
In 1955, the Association’s magazine printed this photo of a Farm-to-Market program project, with a
modern concrete bridge taking shape alongside the covered wooden structure it was replacing.
the Association of County Engineers
of Alabama sounded the alarm
about structurally deficient bridges,
organizing the first County Road and
Bridge Summit in 1999.
Many of the spans built by
the Farm-to-Market Act had been
slapped with weight restrictions as
they neared their 50th birthdays.
The restrictions were especially
challenging and costly for school
systems forced to route their buses
along miles of detours.
Counties, working in
cooperation with the Alabama
Department of Transportation,
developed the GARVEE Bonds
Bridge Program to address the
poor condition of county bridges.
The program hinged on using the
Alabama Trust Fund to provide
matching dollars for a five-year,
$250 million bridge program. Voters
approved the program in 2000 as
the centerpiece of an economic
development package known as
Amendment One.
Just a couple of years in, the
bridge program had demonstrated
that counties could complete large
numbers of high-impact projects in a
short time, and county leaders were
already looking for the next “once-
in-a-lifetime” program.
ATRIP
In 2012, Gov. Robert
Bentley rolled out the Alabama
Transportation Rehabilitation and
Improvement Program (ATRIP) to
invest more than $1 billion in local
roads and bridges. Many counties
completed 15 to 20 years’ worth of
road and bridge projects in a three- to
four-year period. Studies showed that
this accelerated investment provided
Alabamians with more than $6
billion in benefits.
Looking at Autauga County
as an example, ATRIP replaced
three deficient bridge structures and
resulted in more than 75 miles of
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