HF 2148 Summary

• Establishes mandatory project eligibility requirements for the corridors of commerce program including consistency with statewide multimodal transportation plans, interregional corridor location, project classification, maximum time to construction commencement, and maximum allowable project costs.

• Requires the commissioner to establish a project selection process that accepts annual recommendations from area transportation partnerships and stakeholders, then determines eligibility, classifies, and evaluates projects using seven specific objective criteria including return on investment, commerce impacts, freight movement efficiency, traffic safety, regional connections, transportation policy objectives, and community support.

• Mandates the commissioner adopt a weighted policy for evaluation criteria that is applied consistently, with each project receiving a score and all evaluated projects made public with their scores.

• Creates a new long-term corridors of commerce plan including all eligible projects prioritized by their evaluation scores, which may be created by district or statewide.

• Modifies annual legislative reporting requirements to occur by November 1 each year and include the evaluation weighting policy, all candidate project recommendations with eligibility determinations, all evaluated projects with their scores, and independent program evaluations every even-numbered year starting in 2016.