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GREENSBORO — Think of it as the transportation version of the loaves-and-fishes parable: Regional officials stretched $13 million in federal stimulus money to feed $16.5 million in projects Wednesday.

As a result, residents of Pleasant Garden will get a new park-and-ride lot served by the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation, PART will add another bus to its growing fleet, and Summerfield will replace a dangerously inadequate parking lot for the Lake Brandt Greenway.

That’s in addition to four city of Greensboro projects the MPO already planned to earmark for the influx of stimulus money from Washington.

Those projects include $6 million in improvements to Lake Jeanette Road, $5.4 million toward building a new headquarters for the Greensboro Transit Authority, $2.3 million to make South Elm-Eugene Street safer and more walkable, and $1.5 million to repave major streets in various parts of the city.

MPO members were set to approve those four projects and seek other ways of meeting the PART, Pleasant Garden and Summerfield requests.

But they decided they could squeeze Summerfield’s $150,000 request into the mix, taking it from the Elm-Eugene and Lake Jeanette projects, and replacing it with other revenue if needed by either road project.

Then, several members said they felt uncomfortable leaving PART out.

“I don’t want to slight PART because I think PART is a critical part of this MPO structure,” said City Council member Robbie Perkins, MPO chairman.

The MPO is a group of state, county and city officials who guide transportation planning for Guilford County outside High Point and its outskirts.

The initial list of stimulus projects already had a higher price than the $7.4 million Uncle Sam is giving the MPO for road improvements and the $5.4 million for transit.

But the city can use other sources to fill any shortfall, said Adam Fischer, the city’s acting transportation director. Officials also hope contractors may bid lower than earlier estimates because of the slow economy, he said.

MPO members extended that philosophy to the $400,000 PART bus, the $600,000 park-and-ride lot on U.S. 421 in Pleasant Garden and the Summerfield project.

They increased to $300,000 the grant to Summerfield, enough to eventually double the size of a new lot on U.S. 220 to replace the one on Strawberry Road. They chose to pay for the bus and Pleasant Garden’s lot using other MPO money freed by the stimulus grant.

GTA badly needs the $5.4 million to put toward its new $17 million building on Meadowview Road for administration and operations, GTA manager Libby James said. MPO members chuckled at a slide flashed on the monitor showing more GTA buses squeezed into the existing facility on Friendly Avenue than seemed safe or possible.

“That happens every night,” James said of the scene.

In other action related to the stimulus, the MPO recommended that the state give one of the last unfinished sections of the Bicentennial Greenway $600,000 of new federal money set aside for statewide bike and pedestrian projects. The segment would link West Market Street and Ballenger Road.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com