Federal stimulus money is paying for a $6-million project to resurface a section of West Main Road, a major north-south artery on Aquidneck Island.

The Providence Journal Kathy Borchers

MIDDLETOWN, R.I. — Pablo Rivera was working in the rain Thursday, building a sidewalk on West Main Road, and happy to be doing it.

A construction laborer in an industry severely hurt by the recession, he had been laid off before D’Ambra Construction called him back for the job, which is financed by the federal economic stimulus program.

The $6-million Middletown project will resurface a section of West Main Road, a major north-south artery on Aquidneck Island, along with related improvements like curbs, sidewalks and better signs and traffic signals.

If D’Ambra hadn’t bid successfully, Rivera thinks he’d still be out of work.

Rivera is 36 and lives in East Providence. He has a wife and four children — three girls and a boy, aged 4 to 16. He embodies a central goal of the stimulus program, putting people to work quickly on highway jobs.

The state Department of Transportation is getting $137 million under the program and intends to spend it on 54 road and bridge projects scattered across the state. By the end of June, DOT spokesman Charles St. Martin said, 28 were under construction, employing 239 persons. The DOT hired another 89 to supervise the projects. Overall, the DOT expects the projects will employ 1,635.

One hundred and thirty seven million dollars sounds like an enormous amount of money, and it is — about enough to replace a major bridge.

The trouble is, the state has a lot of bridges, large and small, in bad shape, and a lot of bad roads, too — many times what the stimulus money will pay for. For several years, Rhode Island has had the highest, or close to the highest, proportion of deficient bridges in the country, about 50 percent.

The DOT has allocated $22.5 million of the stimulus money for bridge renovation and preventive maintenance. A national survey by the Associated Press last month found that states are putting 12 percent of their money into bridge work. The Rhode Island figure is higher, more than 16 percent.

Given the condition of the state’s bridges, some of the work wrapped into the stimulus projects, like sidewalks, seems less than urgent. DOT Assistant Director Robert A. Shawver said, however, that federal rules require that some money be set aside for enhancements. For example, he said, when the DOT fixes a road, it is required to make the sidewalks and curbs accessible to the disabled.

He also remarked that “sidewalks are hard work,” much of which must be done by hand rather than machine, requiring more workers. Rivera and his fellow workers were using shovels, hammers and sometimes their hands, to move dirt and align wooden forms to make the sidewalk level when concrete is poured.

The state could have put all of its $137 million into one major construction project. However, that approach would have given a great deal of work to one contractor.

Instead, the agency opted to spread the money across different kinds of projects, from guardrail repairs to paving to traffic safety improvements, according to Robert Smith, the DOT’s deputy chief engineer for design. He said the DOT thinks that involving more companies in different fields yielded more competition and contributed to lower-than-expected bids.

Dividing the work up also yielded a politically desirable outcome: projects in many, if not all, towns. The governor’s map shows the state plastered with project markers from one end to the other.

The DOT also chose projects that focus on repairs, and in particular repairs that will avoid much bigger expenses later. Almost two-thirds of the money is allocated to pavement management, road resurfacing, and bridge work.

“Pavement management” includes sealing cracks with liquid asphalt. The result looks as though somebody dribbled tar on the road, but it helps keep the cracks from turning into potholes. If they do, the road must be resurfaced.

Unstopped, the deterioration will eventually penetrate the road, forcing the state to rip up the road and build a new one. (It costs about $220,000 to resurface a mile of road one-lane wide, but as much as $2.5 million per mile to reconstruct it, according to DOT figures.)

When the $137 million is spent, there will be no more. Transportation Director Michael P. Lewis said Rhode Island would easily meet federal “use it or lose it” deadlines and be ready to capture money other states failed to use.

The state DOT met the deadlines — but so did the other states. “There are no crumbs” to scavenge, said Christos S. Xenophontos, the DOT’s contracts manager.

Pointing to a section of curbing planted in the ground and braced with concrete, D’Ambra vice president Stephen Grasso said that each construction worker beside the road represents more jobs elsewhere.

Workers at Durastone, a Lincoln company that makes precast concrete products, made the curbing, he said, and behind them are people working in quarries and factories supplying the sand and cement to make the curb.

However, as is the case with Rivera, part of the program’s impact isn’t creating new jobs, but rather keeping jobs from disappearing.

Grasso said his company recently completed a project on Airport Road in Warwick and was expecting a tough time finding more work for the 15 to 20 workers on that project. The company’s two stimulus projects kept them employed. If it wasn’t for that, Grasso said, “most of those guys would have gone home,” out of work.

Rivera is looking ahead cautiously. The West Main project is supposed to last nearly two years, but Rivera said, “it’ll probably be one year. We’ve got a lot of guys here.”

“I’m just happy to be working,” he said. “I know I’ve got a check coming next week.”DOT estimates for its stimulus projects

Source: Department of Transportation estimates, which will change as bids come in.

blandis@projo.com