Trumbull I-80 project delayed until 2036

January 18, 2012 at 12:07a.m.

COLUMBUS

Construction on a $100.5 million project to add a third lane on a portion of Interstate 80 in Trumbull County will not even begin until 2036, based on projections released Tuesday by the Ohio Department of Transportation.

During a presentation to the Transportation Review Advisory Council, a bi-partisan group responsible for approving funding for the state’s largest transportation projects, ODOT said planned work on several projects could be postponed by decades because of shrinking funds.

ODOT has about $100 million annually to spend on new construction, but the total cost of Tier 1 projects, those that are already under way, totals $2 billion, said Steve Faulkner, ODOT spokesman.

The I-80 project, which would add a lane between Interstate 680 and state Route 193, is a Tier 2 project and was scheduled to begin preliminary engineering in 2013.

“Those projects will not begin until the projects on Tier 1 are complete. ...It would not begin until roughly 2036,” Faulkner said.

ODOT is funded completely with state and federal motor fuel tax and has seen that revenue shrink over the past several years, Faulkner said.

The only other mention of a Mahoning Valley project was modifying interchanges at I-80, I-680, state Route 46 and state Route 11. That project was filed in an earlier TRAC cycle and was not refiled, and therefore was not recommended for TRAC funding now, Faulkner said.