WASHINGTON — While progress in using federal stimulus money to repair the nation’s roads has been stop and go in some states, in Georgia the work of fixing highways has sped along — due in no small part to a deliberate choice to focus much of the state’s nearly $1 billion in funding on easier to complete repaving and road-widening projects.

A McClatchy analysis found that of the 375 highway projects slated for funding in Georgia, 46 percent are under way and 40 percent are completed, according to the most recent federal figures. In neighboring Alabama, 59 percent of the 326 federal stimulus highway projects are under way and 35 percent have been completed.

However, California, which has nearly three times as many highway projects as Georgia slated for funding and is getting $2.5 billion in highway stimulus funds — more than any other state — has yet to start 41 percent of its 979 highway projects, according to analysis of the most recent federal data. In Virginia, 52 percent of 139 projects haven’t been started.

“We made the decision that we were going to spread the money out on a lot of projects rather than a few mega projects and focus on mid- to smaller-sized projects,” said David Spear, a spokesman with the Georgia Department of Transportation. “The thought was that if we focused on those projects it would get more people back to work across more of the state.”

Those efforts met with mixed results.

When the stimulus funds were originally awarded, the state DOT was criticized for moving too slowly to allocate resources.

The department, aware of the additional federal scrutiny the state would receive because it netted such a large amount of funding, moved cautiously early on and met with local officials to discuss the most critically needed projects, Spear said.

In Middle Georgia, that meant projects under way in Bibb County such as the $1.2 million effort to resurface a portion of Ga. 11 were prioritized. A similar emphasis was placed on the $1.2 million effort to resurface a stretch of Ga. 247 in Houston County.

The state DOT was also able to make progress on the Fall Line Freeway, a highway planned to cut across the state and run through Columbus, Macon and Augusta.

Spear said the department is spending $33 million on the portion running through Wilkinson County; the roadwork is part of the Governors Road Improvement, a long-standing effort to connect 95 percent of the state’s cities with a population of 2,500 or more to the interstate system.

“We’ve never had the money to do that except in fits and starts,” Spear said.

The DOT was also criticized for spending roughly 15 percent of the funding on bridges desperately in need of repair or replacement. In May, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that public records showed that the DOT is spending a small fraction — $73.4 million — of its stimulus funds on replacing 30 bridges in poor condition.

Seven of those bridges passed inspections with higher marks, indicating they’re not in poor enough condition to make them automatically eligible for federal bridge-replacement funding, the newspaper found.

“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has no specific requirement for bridges,” U.S. Department of Transportation spokeswoman Nancy Singer told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this year. “The intent of the act was clear. While improving the nation’s infrastructure, the intent of the act is to create jobs.”

But those efforts, too, have fallen a bit short of expectations.

“A lot of people here were probably disappointed in the number of jobs created. The number was probably was more in the hundreds rather than the thousands,” Spear said. “What it did do was save jobs. It certainly saved several hundred jobs — and that’s just in the construction industry alone. It put a billion into our economy that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.”

Before the stimulus, the financially strapped state DOT had little money to spend on new projects, Spear said.

During more economically flush times, the department could fund a $100 million in projects a month, however during the height of the recession, the department was lucky if it could fund $5 million in projects a month, he said.

The cutbacks hit highway contractors and their crews hard. The tough times bred tougher competition and “bids for stimulus-funded work came in about 18 percent less than what we anticipated because contractors were so desperate for work,” Spear said.