SPR 27-696: Communicating the Benefits of a Maintenance Budget Overhaul to Legislators: The Shock Factor of Inaction

Budget overruns can force KYTC to delay routine maintenance like guardrail repair, pothole patching, and mowing, particularly if the agency has to dedicate more funding than expected to winter and emergency responses. Although deferred maintenance does not immediately take assets out of service, repeated delays degrade infrastructure condition. How delays impact user safety is not well understood, easily quantified, nor grasped by the public. Identifying preservation needs, calculating maintenance returns on investment, and developing objective measures that can underpin maintenance budget allocations will all help to close these knowledge gaps. However, they must be complemented by the use of proven communications strategies that vividly convey to legislators and the public the long-term risks and costs of defer-ring routine maintenance.