Alabama taxpayers have spent $59.6 million since 1997 on the Interstate 10 Mobile River Bridge and Bayway project, according to records the state provided to the media on Thursday.

The price tag could climb even higher if the Federal Highway Administration pursues an undisclosed amount of reimbursements, according to Tony Harris, spokesman with the Alabama Department of Transportation.

“Our latest analysis indicates that we may be able to avoid reimbursing the Federal Highway Administration because a viable corridor has been developed and right-of-way acquired,” Harris said in an email. “The final decision on this matter would rest with the Federal Highway Administration. It is not uncommon for the FHWA to rescind funds or require reimbursement when projects are not fully developed.”

In addition, $125 million from a federal Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grant will likely not be finalized by the U.S. Department of Transportation, “which means we’ll lose that funding,” Harris said. The INFRA grant was awarded to the project late last month.

The state also will not receive $420 million in approved federal private activity bonds and an anticipated $800 million in federal Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation (TIFIA) loans after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey declared the project “dead” on Wednesday.

The following are the details about the taxpayer losses directly related to the project’s ending:

-$40 million was spent by ALDOT since 1997 on alignment studies, preliminary engineering, project development and seeking federal approval known as the “record of decision” or ROD, which positioned the Mobile River Bridge and Bayway project to move forward until this week. The ROD was announced by ALDOT earlier this month.

-An additional $19.6 million was spent on right-of-way acquisition. The acquired right-of-way coincided with the corridor identified within the Final Environmental Impact Statement that was also released earlier this month.

ALDOT says that they do not anticipate payouts to the concessionaire teams that were previously shortlisted to bid on the project. Three teams were vying for the project’s contract, and ALDOT was prepared to issue requests for proposals as long as the project remained within both the Mobile County and Eastern Shore “Transportation Improvement Plans” or TIPs.

ALDOT confirmed earlier this month that the losing bidders on the project could have been reimbursed $2 million each. The state said that it was standard procedure in public-private partnerships, or P3 deals, for the losing bidders to receive a reimbursement on expenses that were anticipated to be up to $10 million each.

But no bidding process had begun for the project before Ivey announced the project’s demise.

Harris said that it was always anticipated that some amount of future ALDOT funding was going to be allocated to bond financing associated with the estimated $2.1 billion project.

“That fund will be available for other uses, and I would anticipate that officials from other parts of Alabama will line up to seek portions of that funding,” he said.

Harris said it was “too early to speculate” about the next steps other than to say that the project “can’t move forward after being removed from the Eastern Shore MPO’s Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP).”

The project is unable to be eligible for crucial federal funding if it’s not listed on a TIP.

Harris said that ALDOT will continue looking for ways to address the ongoing traffic gridlock that forms on I-10. The Wallace Tunnel is expected to have an average daily traffic count of 95,000 vehicles per day by 2040, which is more than the highest traffic count in the Wallace Tunnel during July 2018, when there was a vehicle count of 86,470, according to ALDOT.

“ALDOT is continuing to look at ways to provide short-term congestion relief through traffic management techniques and technology, steps which would be necessary over the next few years even if the Mobile River project had not been removed form the Eastern Shore MPO’s (TIP),” Harris said.

Daphne Mayor Dane Haygood, earlier on Thursday, said that he anticipated the state would “pin the blame” on the Baldwin County officials for the project’s demise. The Eastern Shore MPO voted 8-1 to remove the project from the TIP, with only a representative with ALDOT voting to keep it in.

Within two minutes of the vote, Ivey’s office sent out a news release announcing the project as “dead.”

“It seemed to be more of a political statement than a thoughtful business decision,” said Haygood, referring to the news release and the abruptness in which it was released. “There are significant state resources spent up to that point, and to say it’s ‘dead’ without a plan and explanation to the citizens on how things move forward ... What I heard is that 'we’re trying to wash our hands and not solve a problem. The problem is still there. It’s the same problem that has been acknowledged.”

He added, “If the state’s position is that they are not going to deal with the problem and not present solutions, then state that. If it’s considering alternatives, then state that. But I don’t know what it means for a project to be ‘dead.’ Solutions need to be found.”

Baldwin County officials have said that it was best to allow the massive project to “die” rather than having to proceed with the state’s first major P3 arrangement that involved tolling drivers in Mobile and Baldwin counties.

Public pressure also played a role. An anti-toll Facebook page had amassed 54,000 followers since mid-May, and coastal Alabama politicians have been bombarded with emails and phone calls from irate residents ever since.

ALDOT had proposed a $6 one-way toll for drivers who utilized the entire span of I-10 from Virginia Street in Mobile to U.S. 98 in Daphne. ALDOT was committed to a non-toll route involving the Spanish Fort Causeway, the Bankhead Tunnel and the Cochrane-Africatown Bridge.

State Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, said part of the problem with the project had to do with tolling existing free lanes of interstate.

“There are eight free lanes between Mobile and Baldwin counties and, at the end of (the project), there would only be four free lanes,” said Simpson. “I think that is a huge issue.”

Haygood said on Thursday that he felt the Eastern Shore MPO didn’t do anything different than what the Mobile County MPO did when it voted recently to remove its own portion of the I-10 project from its TIP.

But the Mobile County move was to table a final decision on whether to re-include the project until after Oct. 7, when Ivey had planned for a hearing on the project before the Alabama Toll Road, Bridge and Tunnel Authority. The governor abruptly canceled that meeting after the Eastern Shore MPO’s vote.

Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, chairman of the Mobile County MPO, attended the Eastern Shore MPO’s meeting in Fairhope. He left before the vote was made, but later posted on Twitter that he was “disappointed” that there wasn’t a path forward on the project.

He said that given time, he felt that Ivey would have been successful in finding alternatives to tolling. Ivey had said she was open to reasonable alternatives to tolls, but some Baldwin County lawmakers felt that alternatives they were pitching to the governor and ALDOT were not being considered.

Regarding the bridge - Gov. Ivey asked for more time to find alternatives to the toll model. I believe that, given time, she would have been successful. The members of the Mobile MPO agreed, as reflected by their unanimous vote on Aug 22. — Sandy Stimpson (@MayorStimpson) August 29, 2019

Stimpson said that he felt the road ahead for Mobile and Baldwin counties “is full of possibility.”

Bill Sisson, president and CEO of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, said he believes the “dust needs to settle” first on the project before all parties reconsider how to address the I-10 congestion problem.

“That involves the business community, ALDOT and others and really begin thinking about solutions,” Sisson said. “At the end of the day, the congestion problem doesn’t go away. It will only get worse. We have to have a solution.”