Background
In 2019, the Legislature commissioned a study to assess statewide transportation needs and priorities from 2022-2031, and to identify existing and potential transportation funding mechanisms to address those needs and priorities.
The study determined that Washington State counties face an annual transportation funding gap of at least $1 billion. What the study was not able to fully define were the specifics associated with that funding gap.
The RAP Program and Its Current Limitations
The County Road Administration Board’s most popular, and long-standing, funding program, the Rural Arterial Program (RAP), was created in 1983 to fund the reconstruction of rural arterial roads which faced severe deterioration in the wake of railroad abandonments. This $40 million a biennium program has been a great success, funding over $65 million of county road improvements in its nearly 40 years of existence. It is extremely popular, each biennium seeing at least triple the demand of available resources.
However, RAP has its limitations:
- The program can only fund improvements to a county’s arterial and collector system. It cannot fund projects on the local access system. Local access roads are 62% of the county road system in Washington yet have no federal or state grants available specifically for the improvement of local access roads.
- When the program was created by the Legislature, it was to target improvements necessary for freight and goods. Needs that exist today in the rural area of a county include ADA facilities, fish barrier removal, bike and pedestrian facilities, storm water retention and treatment, streetlights, and traffic signals or roundabouts. These present-day needs could not be foreseen at the time because they were an unknown issue (such as fish barrier removal) and accepted as improvements only for urban areas.
- The program was not established to include concepts such as environmental justice or to assess the impact of projects of vulnerable communities.
These new demands, the statewide needs assessment conclusions, combined with RAPs limitations, make it clear statewide programs are not fully meeting the 21st century needs of county road departments.
We value your insights and want to hear your thoughts!
During the 2023 Legislative session, CRAB received funding to perform a study to look at the effectiveness of the current RAP program. The intent of the study is to explore if these programs meet the needs of the counties, recommend changes to the program to meet the current needs, or recommend new grant programs to fill the needs not met by RAP.
CRAB is forming a steering committee to assist with the preparation and review of the study to ensure county voices are heard and included and are soliciting volunteers to serve on the steering committee. The goal is to have at least one member from each of the five RAP regions participate. Our hope is that a broad spectrum of professionals from engineers, project or program managers, and transportation planning will participate.
If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity or would like to volunteer, please fill out our brief interest form or reach out to me at drew.woods@crab.wa.gov. I look forward to hearing from you!
