Wisconsin Highway Costs Exceed State DOT Estimates By Nearly 100%

It cost $1.5 billion to build 19 major projects between 2006 and 2015 -- $772.5 million more than originally estimated, the Legislative Audit Bureau found. Even though the state was spending money on most of these projects for 18 years or more, the DOT didn't take into account the considerable effects that inflation and changes to project design would have on those costs over time.

Another 16 projects that were ongoing as of August 2016 saw similar spikes in their costs. Originally expected to cost $2.7 billion, they are now slated to come in at $5.8 billion, the audit found.

This is nothing new.

People like former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist for whom I worked between 1996 and 2004 fought for years against bloated WisDOT over-spending and over-building during gubernatorial administrations of both political parties, and even offered unsuccessfully an alternative plan crafted by city engineers to cut nearly $400 million from the roughly $8o0 million finally spent on the expanded Marquette Interchange and that also cost the city mightily in lost taxable property.

And I have recounted often on this blog -- an example, here -- that the Marquette was just the first step in a $6.4 billion (in 2002 dollars) Southeastern Wisconsin Freeway rebuilding and reconstruction plan which will add with all its maintenance and related costs going forward 127 new mile lanes across seven counties -- a road-builders' dream written by the sprawl-inducing and suburban-tilting Southeastern Regional Planning Commission through a $1 million WisDOT grant without, as Norquist pointed out, any financing plan.