Project

Economic Evaluation: I-10 Broadway Curve Reconstruction and Expansion

The I-10 Broadway Curve Project consists of a $663 million investment over five years to reconstruct, expand, and improve sections of I-10 from I-17 and State Route 202/Santan Freeway. 

EBP performed both an economic impact and benefit cost analysis of the project using the Maricopa Association of Governments’ (MAG) VIA Toolkit, an add on to TREDIS. The EBP team used project level data and outputs from MAG’s travel demand model to analyze the broader impacts of improved transportation reliability, higher speeds, and less congestion on the Phoenix Metro area.

As part of the modeling, EBP applied a new quality jobs methodology to assess and classify the long-term growth by occupation. This new method assesses future job growth, openings, and total compensation, including wages and other employee benefits, to determine how transportation improvements affect different occupations in the region.

The analysis found that 18% of the long-term jobs created from the project are either middle to good income jobs that are forecasted to remain stable with positive growth. Overall, the EBP team found improvements to I-10 Broadway Curve will result in 250 new long-term jobs for the region due to new income from increased sales from local suppliers, and the transportation efficiencies that provide local businesses with improved access and reduced costs. The project will save travelers in the Phoenix metro area 2.5 million hours per year otherwise spent in traffic, resulting in $130 million a year in time savings.