It is a commonplace that every act of creation is also an act of destruction, because you have to change what is into what you're trying to make instead. Sometimes the destruction outweighs the creative act. A regular violator is the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
In the nearby town of Waynesville, a promised highway project made much of the local real estate unsaleable and, as it drug on for years without issue, caused a whole side of town to fall into disrepair. The project was eventually put on indefinite hold. Another local highway has been undergoing traffic-stopping construction for years in order to install a bicycle lane that no one will use, because the NCDOT has decided it likes bicycle lanes.
The editor of the Sylva Herald went back through his archives to try to figure out who was at fault. His determination? All the local leaders opposed doing this, and were vocal about not wanting to widen the road for years. NCDOT is doing it anyway. "Superstreets are in vogue and NCDOT, pretty much an uncaring bureaucracy, brought out the cookie cutter to plop down another one."
A lot of people complain about the Federal government, and it's usually warranted; but the state governments are just as bad.
7 comments:
Yes, in our so-called democracy all important decisions that impact your life are handed down from above by people you don't like . At this point I'd be happy with a lazy king who just left everybody alone.
Part and parcel of "infrastructure" fetishes.
The attraction, to whatever extent is was originally reasonable, is the hope that a dollar invested on public improvement projects -- "infrastructure" -- will stimulate other investments in private enterprises, and return some multiple dollars in taxes or in unmeasurable well-being, given time. Build a bridge or a canal or a pier, and the traffic allows trade allows profits allows growth...
But every dollar so invested (or spent) is unique. A dollar spent on a bridge linking Ketchikan, AK with their International Airport is going to return much less than a dollar spent on a good sewer system. A dollar spent on the school district's huge new football stadium will make less difference to the students than a dollar spent upgrading the WiFi.
Worse, government projects literally never know when to quit. Reach the end of the budget with project left to build? Go back to the voters and taxpayers and beg for more "infrastructure" money. While the begging goes on, the work completed ages and rots, and the dollars spent so far get wasted.
Or, and the original budget is almost always an original LIE. "Springfield can build the monorail for $1 billion." Well, $1.25 billion later the monorail is only 20% complete, and unless we want all the money wasted then Homer and Marge have to chip in some -- a lot -- more.
Yes think Pinochet in Chile, what a great idea! - Greg
I don't think Pinochet was exactly famous for leaving people alone, but I would even settle for him over the collection of assclowns that rules us now.
The raison d'etre of the typical state transportation department is to spend gas tax money, the bulk of which comes from the federal government by "formula" (distinct tranches of money identified by Congress for designated categories of spending (as opposed to an "earmark", which is an explicit line item in the federal budget spending money on a specific local project.))
Formula funds aren't earmarked for individual projects, but they still come with strings affecting how you spend it. Most of it is for garden variety road projects, but not all. Some has to be spent on transit. Some on projects that specifically improve safety. And so on.
The bike lane project, for example. If NCDOT "likes bike lanes", it's because there is formula money available for bike lane projects (probably for "multi-modal transportation projects", which includes bike lanes as a qualifying use of those formula funds). Liking bike lanes is a learned behavior, because Congress left a pile of "bike lane money" laying around. If the formula had a pile of "landscaped median" money instead, it wouldn't take long at all for NCDOT's people to learn that they like landscaped medians
Nothing about my comment here invalidates your point about bureaucratic dumbassery, BTW.
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