This Plan defines visionary, yet pragmatic, investment choices Arizona will make over the next 25 years to maintain and improve its multimodal transportation system. The Plan is not rigid or fixed. It is part of a continuous process of planning, implementation, operation, and preservation and will evolve over time to reflect and be responsive to future changes in needs, resources, and priorities. This Plan is strategic in nature, examining investment types for ADOT’s capital program; it does not examine nor recommend any specific projects.

This report presents the financial position of the Department on a cash basis as of June 30. This report includes all funds used to record the financial activity of the Department. Responsibility for both the accuracy of the data and the completeness and fairness of the presentation rests with the Department.

Transportation is critical to Arizona’s economic success. To have a strong economy, our state must have quality highways, public transit, railroads, airports and ports of entry to get people to work and to move products and provide services. By building transportation infrastructure, we can actually strengthen the economy, create jobs and support business development. However, a significant gap exists between projected revenues and transportation investments necessary to support a vibrant economy. Our priorities for the future will focus our limited resources on preserving and modernizing what we already have to protect the taxpayer investment in the existing transportation system.

The Department was established by the state legislature in July 1974 by combining the former Arizona Highway Department (originally established in 1927) and the Department of Aeronautics (originally established in 1962). The Department is not legally separate from the State of Arizona's primary government. The Department's mission is to provide a safe, efficient, cost-effective transportation system. The vision is the standard of excellence for transportation systems and services. This report includes all funds used to record the financial activity of the Department.

The proposed action is the construction and operation of a new multilane freeway in the metropolitan Phoenix area extending approximately 22 to 24 miles from Interstate 10 west of Phoenix to Interstate 10 southeast of Phoenix. The facility would be the final extension of State Route 202L, an element of the Maricopa Association of Governments' adopted Regional Freeway and Highway System.

This report examined the effects of freeway development on land use and property values. A case study was prepared for the Superstition Freeway (US60) corridor in Mesa and Gilbert, Arizona. Among the findings were the following observations:
* New freeways provide substantial benefits to users in the form of travel time savings and reductions in costs associated with operating motor vehicles.
* Access benefits are transferred from highway users to non-users through changes in property values.
Freeway construction may have an adverse impact on some properties, but in the aggregate, property
values tend to increase with freeway development.
* Not all properties values are affected by freeways in the same way. Proximity to the freeway was observed to have a negative effect on the value of detached single-family homes in the US60 corridor, but to have a positive effect on multifamily residential developments (e.g. condominiums) and most commercial properties.
* The most important factor in determining negative impact on property values appears to be the level of traffic on any major roads in the proximate area, which implies that regional traffic growth is more significant than the presence of a freeway per se.
* Given the beneficial effects of freeway development on the value of certain types of properties, local
governments may benefit from appropriate planning and zoning decisions in the vicinity of a freeway
corridor.

Seeking to identify how Arizona Department of Transportation could accomplish the greatest service improvements with the most efficient use of funds, ADOT engaged ARCADIS to perform a Crash Data Collection and Analysis study and examine the possibilities offered by technological innovations such as Electronic Data Entry, Relational Database Management Systems, and Geographic Information Systems. The study resulted in a comprehensive report with three components: an examination of best practices in use in the United States today, a use case and gap analysis examining ADOT's current data work, and a technical memorandum outlining how changes could be implemented.