Group Working To Improve Road Safety

AAA announced on Monday its support and endorsement of the Transportation Revenues Used Strictly for Transportation Coalition's "Fix Our Roads - Be F.O.R. It!" campaign. The campaign is designed to stop the diversion of road taxes and fees to non-transportation spending. The TRUST Coalition is a group of individuals, organizations, companies, and chambers of commerce dedicated to boosting highway funding in the state.

"Two of Oklahoma's most critical highway arteries, the Crosstown I-40 in Oklahoma City and I-244 in Tulsa, have structural ratings worse than the Minnesota bridge that collapsed last August," said Chuck Mai, spokesman for AAA Oklahoma.

"In addition, thousands of county and rural roads and bridges in our state are in deplorable condition. It's time for the legislature to keep their commitment to fund our state's roads and bridges," said Mai. "Failure to do so will continue to compromise the safety of Oklahoma families on our roadways and will result in the loss of $127 million in scheduled repair and construction projects in the state's current eight-year construction plan."

TRUST's Fix Our Roads campaign includes legislative goals that over a period of time would transfer the 30% of motor vehicle tag fees currently going to general government, to transportation priority areas instead. This would result in an additional $200 million annually going for the state's roads and bridges.

Additionally, officials say the campaign would remove the 3% economic growth trigger from the state's funding formula and raise the cap on state spending for transportation to $500 million annually.