The Highway Law: Hogs Rule
Let's hope those Midwesterners riding their bikes to work in February have tire chains.
Our new highway reauthorization law has a bunch of goodies for trucking, as outlined elsewhere in this issue. But its abundance of pork-barrel projects – and some things that aren't even related to highways – defy logic. (Well, maybe not, if you understand what's logical to politicians).
While pork is standard fare with most any major bill going through Congress, this one's a real oinkfest. It will fund over 6,300 special projects in legislators' home territories, at a cost of $24 billion – much of it from the fuel taxes you pay.
By comparison, the 1998 highway act had 1,850 slabs of pork in it, at a cost of $9 billion. In 1991 the act had just 538 projects, and in 1987 the number was only 152. Do we see a trend here?
By now you've probably heard about the most notorious hunk of ham – the bridge to nowhere. It's going to connect Ketchikan, Alaska (pop. 8,000) to Gravina Island (pop. 50). Word is, it'll be almost as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and 80 feet higher than the Brooklyn Bridge. Cost: $223 million.
Reportedly, Gravina Island is 20 miles long, has no stores and no paved roads. But Alaska's Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens are respective chairmen of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and the Senate Appropriations Committee – powerful porkers, for sure.
Hence Alaska, the third-least populated state, is getting nearly $941 million in special projects – fourth most among all states. Word has it that another new bridge, from Anchorage to an area where 23 people live, will cost $231 million. Designed to serve future development, it will be named Don Young's Way. (Boss Hog's Trough would seem more fitting.)
Here's another one: Rep. Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, the senior Democrat on the House Transportation Committee, engineered a $100-million pig pot pie for a pilot bicycle and pedestrian trail program in four states. There's lots of other bike-and-people-trail pork in the law, but this one's different: It's going to entice commuters to give up their cars and either bike or walk to work.
The four areas for the pilot: Minneapolis-St. Paul; Sheboygan County, Wis.; Columbia, Mo., and Marin County, Calif. Maybe it'll work in Missouri and California, but I hope the folks in Minnesota and Wisconsin have tire chains and heaters for their bikes.
Lawmakers from other states were busy makin' bacon, too. There's $3 million for "dust control mitigation" on country roads in Arkansas, $480,000 to rehabilitate a historic warehouse on the Erie Canal and $2.3 million for landscaping along the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California. (Ironically, President Reagan once vetoed a highway bill for having too much pork.)
Some other folks got in on the feeding frenzy, too. According to the taxpayer watchdog Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, the law has tax breaks for alcoholic beverage producers and wholesalers, certain fishing equipment and luxury seaplane transportation.
All this, when the American Society of Civil Engineers says 160,000 of our bridges and 34% of our roads need repair. Those who defend the pork barrel system point to the jobs it creates. But appropriating monies for doing the right thing would do that, too. So, you ask, when will Congressmen come to their senses?
Yep, you guessed it: When pigs fly.
Doug Condra
President
E-mail Doug Condra at dcondra@truckinginfo.com, or write PO Box W. Newport Beach, Calif. 92656.
