Story comments - Reporter-Times.com/MD-Times.com

Hot topics » Buskirk doing well after se ... Passmore, Ooley, Fite race ... Relay for Life briefs -- Ma ...

Fast-track to I-69 is no good

read more recent story comments Reader comments

Ed
Thursday, May 20, 2010: 6:24 pm
More from Ed

I would have to agree.

Liberty
Friday, May 21, 2010: 8:38 pm
More from Liberty

To spare space.
.
CLICK FOR : Governor's I-69 expansion helps or pollutes southern Indiana ?

Step Up
Saturday, May 22, 2010: 2:26 am
More from Step Up

This Governor chose to spend tax dollars on a highway of marginal importance while making drastic cuts to public education with more on the way next year. What a pitiful shame.

elelady
Monday, May 24, 2010: 3:10 pm
More from elelady

Go with the flow or be left behine, I rather see Martinsville grow and thrive and
the only way is to stay current with the needs of everyone.

Ed
Tuesday, May 25, 2010: 5:35 pm
More from Ed

elelady, Comprehending what you read and learning to spell are great ways to grow and thrive!

Ed
Thursday, June 3, 2010: 2:53 pm
More from Ed

For all of you interested in the waste of I69, I found this editorial written in a major Indiana, State Capital, city newspaper, that rhymes with TrendyCar. (Like that one Brian?)

The road frugality forgot

Dan Carpenter, June 2, 2010

Though he'd never let himself get caught
borrowing such language, Gov. Mitch
Daniels could describe the I-69 extension
as his stimulus package.

Certainly, it fits the formula he'd love to
cite if the other political party were
pushing it: huge, overpriced,
unnecessary, even destructive public
works project designed to please special
interests and generate temporary jobs,
with the vague promise of lasting
economic value.

As a twist, the gold-paved road to
Evansville is an inherited mess, a legacy
from the Democrats that Daniels could
have treated with all the warmth he
showed toward the rest of the budget
problems that awaited his legendary
"blade." Instead, he embraced the waste.

He could have saved a few billion tax
dollars by aborting the project altogether,
leaving Evansville with the two federal
highway connections (including I-64)
that it already has and leaving Indiana
in the top half-dozen or so states in
interstate density.

Or, he could have proceeded with I-69
but used the least expensive, least
property-consuming, least
environmentally damaging of the various
routes that were proposed before Daniels'

predecessor chose the opposite
alternative, the so-called "new terrain"
corridor.

Daniels had a choice; and even with land
acquisition and excavation and
contracting under way, he still wakes up
every morning with a choice about this
boondoggle. Instead, he crows about
accelerating the bulldozer blitz while
waxing apocalyptic about the conjectural
cost of expanding health care, which may
not nick the state as much in a decade as
the I-69 extension and about which the
state has no choice.

Unlike human health, which is always an
investment in the future, superhighways
embody technology and policy that have
seen their best days and should do
anything but expand in the face of oil's
unsustainable risks and costs. In Indiana ,
mass transit is starving for pennies while
pavement gorges on the Major Moves
manna, as if the most progressive
communities in the nation were not the
greenest.

While Daniels would portray I-69 in
particular as hard-headed economics --
and Medicaid, with the feds picking up
the bulk of the tab, as a debit -- the
long-term benefit of more miles of
interstate remains highly dubious. If I-69
truly were a lifeline to smalltown
Indiana , why didn't our leaders select the
I-70-U.S. 41 alternative, which not only
would cost less but also would traverse
the state's poorest counties? And why is
there bipartisan opposition in the
Indianapolis metropolitan area to the
planned connection in Perry Township ?

As a supporter of the current president, I
have to say a stimulus package can be a
good thing, now and down the road. At
its best, however, it's a gamble. At its
worst, its pork barrel politics. Which is
bad enough when you're not complaining
about all the incidentals, such as health
care, that you can't afford.

6 comments found