The Indiana General Assembly passed legislation in 2016 and 2017 that expanded the resources available to local governments for local roads and bridges. The PPI research team completed a series of reports with support from the Indiana Soybean Alliance and the Indiana Corn Marketing Council. Rural Roads and Bridge Needs 2023 documents road and bridge spending and the changes in road and bridge ratings for the three-year period (2021‒23). Charting a Sustainable Course for Indiana’s Rural Roads and Bridges explores the use of the newly collected road and bridge data to evaluate future spending scenarios and the resulting conditions ratings.
Key findings
- Previous investments have improved the county road and bridge networks.
- The county road network will require sustained investment due to its size and cyclical cycle of improvement and deterioration.
- Traditional needs studies have not been resource constrained resulting in very large projected funding gaps.
- The data collected from local government asset management plans since 2016‒17 allows for the exploration of Indiana-specific analyses, including various future needs scenarios and their projected effects on conditions.
- Additional county spending can occur with new revenues, rebalancing revenues, and gaining efficiencies or cost savings.
