Of Earmarks and Bridges:
This does seem like a pretty obvious and important point to make in the wake of the horrible Minnesota tragedy, doesn't it? (Via Glenn).
In related news, I see that "The Bridge to Nowhere" now has its own Wikipedia entry.
9/11 was horrible; The bridge was a tragedy to be sure; mostly for those who lost loved ones. To the citizens of metropolitan Minneapolis it is and will be a great inconvenience. To the rest of us it was shocking. The media and many bloggers like Todd, need to restrain their emotions a bit and quit listening to the 24/7 news reports and get some perspective. Much worse has and will happen.
But, the list of those blamed who had nothing to do with is already long: the governor, the transportation secretary, the last 3 governors, the legislature, Bush, Congress, etc. My favored targets would be Congressman squandering money on pork, or MN congressman squandering money on light rail and commuter rail.
In the long run, the only thing coming out of this that will affect me will be that my taxes will go up and my commute will be totally ruined.
You--and the previous commenter with a similar sentiment--have a horrible case of diarrhea of the mouth. Hell, I've had a horrible toothache. "Horrible" is not reserved for the worst of the worst.
Yeah right, as if members of Congress were capable of feeling embarrassed.
I'm a little reluctant to blame politicians' lust for earmarks as being responsible for a bridge collapse. Members of Congress may have had their priorities screwed up, but why didn't the State do the maintenance with its own money? I don't know how much money Minnesota has in its own transportation budget, by my own State had a $3 billion State DOT budget for FY 2006. That would seem like plenty of money to include a cut for bridge maintenance. I have a sense though that the situation is much more complicated. Many States seem to have become dependent on federal transportation funds to supplement their own projects and perhaps they won't commit to major projects without matching federal funds.
This sounds like a FOIA request waiting to happen.
I largely agree with Prof. Zywicki on this. I don't agree that the lust for earmarks directly caused the bridge to collapse. But I think it is worthwhile and appropriate to examine all areas of Congressional mismanagement of taxpayer money, including infrastructure related earmarks, in response to a disaster like this.
Even though he is gone, this spending will go on for years.
There is no reason that nearly every bridge in the country, even on dirt and gravel roads, should have Federal involvement. We should reduce the Federal Gas tax by 15 cents per gallon, "letting" the states raise their taxes by 15 cents per gallon and end the Federal involvement in any road that is not a US highway. This would mean that 15 cents per gallon would go to infrastructure rather than 10 (my guess) as it is now.
What I do see is the very predictable opportunism of SOME people to take advantage of any bad situation to promote their own political agendas.
Not to throw gasoline on the partisan fires here, but...
Should federal money have been spent on it? Or state money or city money? I don't know, but all the related questions become a lot simpler when we can dismiss them with a cute catch phrase instead of dealing with substantive issues.
Unfortunately, I gave up. Some people like their cute sayings regardless of how the saying reflects reality.
The other bridge in the "Bridges to Nowhere" package would connect Anchorage, AK to largely undeveloped land across a 3-mile wide inlet. Perhaps that's where some of the confusion comes from.
The bridge inspection system works very well. The number of collapses is about one per 5 years, or 1 per million bridge-years. Sheesh. Find my another program that works as well.
Drug rehabilitation, anyone?
Besides, there is the argument (by the very stimulating Henry Petroski in 'Why Things Fail') that if bridges don't fail from time to time, engineers are not doing their job of refining designs so that the overall cost to society will be the least possible.
That's an argument that ought to resonate with antitaxers and libertarians, I would think.
When someone says that they're "in the middle of nowhere," do you pedantically correct them and point out that they must be somewhere?
My point is that there are destinations on each side. Even if there were none (more like the proposed Knik Arm bridge in Anchorage), there's still the possibility of "if you build it, they will come," i.e. "nowhere" eventually becomes somewhere, thanks to the bridge.
What would be the correct pricetag for a bridge to connect Ketchikan to its airport? I don't know. Should federal dollars be involved at all? I don't know. I just want to see a stop to this "nowhere" nonsense. It's obviously not "nowhere" -- it's just "nowhere I want to spend $230 Million to get to."
FWIW, Alaska already has a Million Dollar Bridge to Nowhere. It connects Cordova across the Copper River to... nowhere. Nevertheless, the state pays to maintain the disused bridge to avoid the greater expense of cleaning up the collapse.