Strickland promises money for highways, streetcars

After introducing a $7.7 billion transportation and public safety budget today, Gov. Ted Strickland promised that planned highway projects will remain intact and that his administration will help find federal money for such local projects as bringing streetcars back to Cincinnati.

In his State of the City speech Tuesday, Mayor Mark Mallory proposed a streetcar feasibility study.

"We believe there are federal resources. . .that would be available for those services," Strickland said of bringing trolleys or light rail back to cities like Cincinnati and Columbus.

Strickland told a Statehouse news conference that alternative forms of transportation fit in with his administration's efforts to protect air quality. He said some of his new initiatives will be included in the state's operating budget, when it is introduced on March 15.

The governor said he'll be "as minimally disruptive as possible" to transportation projects already planned, although he's asked for a 90-day review starting July 1 of all new projects. "I’m unwilling to say that there will be no changes or no disruptions."

Although he's concerned about state government's current debt, Strickland said he's willing to increase state transportation department borrowing of up to 15 percent of its total budget, from a current level of 8 percent, in order to protect road projects planned or under way.