AUGUSTA – The $113 million transportation bond voters will be asked to approve on June 12 is unprecedented in size, according to Transportation Commissioner David Cole.

But so is the need.

In the last four years, road and bridge construction costs have jumped 35 percent, which has translated into deferred and canceled projects around the state.

In the last two years, Cole said, the Department of Transportation has deferred some $200 million in work because of a lack of funds.

If voters approve the bond, $100 million will be applied to DOT’s 2007-2008 road and bridge work plan. The remaining $13 million is earmarked for nonhighway and nonbridge needs, such as improvements in railroads, ports and ferries, buses, aviation, and pedestrian and bicycle trails.

DOT’s two-year work plan calls for $840 million in road and bridge work, making it “the largest work plan in history,” said Greg Nadeau, DOT deputy commissioner. That plan relies on passage of the $113 million bond.

Cole and Nadeau estimate that an additional $375 million would let DOT catch up on the work it has identified, but that money is not on the horizon.

“This bond is essential that we don’t fall further behind,” Nadeau said, and “is absolutely crucial to our work plan.”

Likening DOT’s plight to having a leaky roof on a home, he argued that it is prudent to do the work now, rather than wait for damage to worsen and repair costs to rise.

The timing of the bond would allow DOT to apply the funds to projects that already are contracted and ready to be completed this summer, Cole said.

“We need to do the work now. This is the time to do the work,” he said.

If the bond fails to win voter approval, DOT will apply a complicated analysis to decide which roads and bridges are put on hold, but at the very least, many projects now in the pipeline would be deferred immediately because of the short construction season in Maine.

DOT plans to bring another bond request before voters in June 2008 that would seek to borrow $23 million. Of that amount, $10 million would be applied to road and bridge work, and $13 million would go toward other transportation needs.

Even if the 2007 bond wins voter approval, as is likely, given the history of such borrowing requests in Maine, DOT’s problems remain.

“We need to find a longer-term source of predictable, sustainable funding,” Cole said, so such short-term boosts are not required.

In developing the 2007-2008 work plan, DOT took a new approach. Rather than merely prioritizing road and bridge repair needs, officials worked to find projects in which state funds could be matched with federal and private money, a process Nadeau called “marrying funding sources.”

The idea, he explained, is to “leverage every federal dollar. We don’t want to leave any federal dollars on the table.” That goal, as much as road and bridge needs, drove the work plan.

The $100 million portion of the bond would leverage $161 million more in federal funds and $15 million in private funds.

Maria Fuentes, executive director of the Maine Better Transportation Association, an advocacy firm for the transportation industry, said her group has raised funds for the current advertising campaign supporting a yes vote on the bond. Though transportation bonds historically are approved, she fears many people may not know it is on the ballot, and a light turnout could skew results.

The need for the funding is an easy argument to make, Fuentes said.

“We’re not even keeping pace with what we were planning to do,” she said. “Our system is getting much older and our roads are really at risk.”

The work plan calls for repairing or rebuilding just one-third of the bridges that should be addressed, Fuentes said.

Getting the bond funds also would help restore jobs that have been cut in the transportation business, she said.

Roads and bridges in need of repair affect “just about every person just about every day,” she said.

The nonhighway and nonbridge portion of the bond is also critical, according to DOT.

The $13 million would devote:

. $3.8 million to passenger and freight rail systems, including repairing the Rockland branch.

. $1.7 million to port and ferry improvements, including $1 million for the Small Harbor Improvement Program and $280,000 toward a federal channel-deepening study in Searsport.

. $3.6 million to transit, including $1 million for fleet expansion of the Island, Shoreline and Mountain Explorer bus systems, and $2.6 million toward an intermodal passenger facility in Trenton.

. $3.2 million for aviation infrastructure.

. $500,000 toward pedestrian and bicycle trails, including the Down East Sunrise Trail in Hancock and Washington counties.

Transportation bond

Do you favor a $112,975,000 bond issue for improvements to highways and bridges, airports, public transit facilities, ferry and port facilities including port and harbor structures and bicycle and pedestrian trails that makes the State eligible for over $265,525,000 in federal and other matching funds?