RTA launches new 20-year, $2.6B Tucson-area transportation plan

Pima County elected officials and transportation staff gathered Friday at Pima Community College’s East Campus to symbolically launch the first project of the RTA Next plan approved by roughly 60 percent of voters in March.

No shovelfuls of dirt were thrown – “We figured that closing down a lane of Irvington Road was probably not the best idea,” RTA Executive Director Mike Ortega told the crowd – but speeches were made to mark the start of the new $2.6 billion transportation package, which will fund road construction, expanded transit, bike and pedestrian lanes and other transportation programs over the next 20 years.

The plan is funded through a half-cent-per-dollar sales tax collected throughout Pima County.

The first project, set to begin on Aug. 17 and conclude in mid-January 2027, is a reconstruction of Irvington Road between Sierra Road and Kolb Road, which marks the RTA’s first-ever pavement rehabilitation project. During the first 20 years of the RTA, the agency focused on expanding capacity, not maintaining their condition.

In the new RTA package, $177.6 million was set aside for rebuilding arterial streets in need of repair.

Tucson Mayor Regina Romero called the Irvington project “another direct example of how investing in infrastructure improves daily lives. While there is still work to do, we are making steady and meaningful progress. I have always believed that public infrastructure investment leverages private investment. When we invest in our roads, transit, sidewalks, parks, and other public infrastructure, we are investing in the economic future of our communities.”

Ortega noted that Tucson Department of Transportation and Mobility Director Sam Credio grew up near the Southeast Side neighborhood where the work is being done.

“I don’t think the road’s been paved since he was born,” Ortega joked.

Credio said that he still lived in the area, as do his in-laws.

“I know personally and firsthand how badly this road needs to be repaved, and that is why we were thrilled in March when Pima County voters approved the RTA plan, and our team, led by (Deputy Director of Transportation) Jim DeGrood here in the audience, jumped on it immediately,” he said.

By April, city staff had a list of proposed roads to repave with RTA dollars. The Tucson City Council approved it, as did the RTA Board.

Ward 4 Councilmember Nikki Lee, who represents the area, remarked that “road work is painful. We’re no stranger to that, so we just want to ask for the community’s patience as we go through this project. … Our inconvenience, our temporary pain, will be rewarded when we are standing here to cut the ribbon for this project early next year.”

Ortega told the crowd that “this is just the beginning.”

“We’re going to be – and I hate to use the word, but I’ll use it – we’re going to be tearing up a lot of roads,” Ortega said. “We got 20 years of this, right?”

Ortega has a long list of projects he wants to see finished in the next five years that represent phase 1 of the RTA plan.

He told the Sentinel that he wants to see the RTA complete the seven projects that didn’t get done in the first 20 years of the original RTA plan, which was approved by Pima County voters in 2006.

Those projects include a widening of Grant Road in Midtown, 22nd Street east of Interstate 10 and the West Side’s Silverbell Road.

He also wants to finish nine more projects that were promised in the first five years of the second round.

Ortega said much of the design work on many of the projects has been completed, so now it’s a matter of laying the asphalt.

He said he was “very confident” the projects would be done in the next five years.