This page was last updated on April 8, 2010.
Road block; Editorial; Beaver County Times; April 8, 2010.
I believe you’ll find most of this editorial’s talking points have already been covered by previous Times editorials dating back to at least 2007.
The single “new” point was expressed in the editorial’s first five paragraphs:
“If you want to see the potential consequences of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s rejection of Pennsylvania’s plan to impose tolls on Interstate 80, look around the next time you’re on Interstate 70 between Washington and the Mon Valley.
“At one point along this stretch of road through rural Washington County, you’ll see concrete abutments on either side of the road. A bridge used to be there. It’s not anymore.
“That’s because the bridge didn’t carry enough traffic to justify spending the big bucks that were needed to rebuild or renovate it to carry traffic over I-70.
“It was more practical to tear it down, leaving those few motorists who used it with a longer drive (in time and distance) to get from here to there.
“It was infrastructure triage, and it will become more common if the Legislature and the Rendell administration (or, more likely, the next one) don’t address the massive funding gap the department’s decision created.”
Assuming the Times reporting is correct, PennDOT performed a cost/benefit analysis and determined the cost of replacing the bridge exceeded its benefits. As a result, PennDOT chose not to replace the bridge. This process should be SOP. Based on the final paragraph, however, the Times does not believe in this process. (On a side note, how does the Times decide which business expenditures to make?) Apparently the Times believes we should build everything we want without regard for what we really need or the burden on us taxpayers. This would be consistent with the Times’ nearly blanket approval for just about every spending proposal that comes down the pike. Contrary to the Times apparent position, we need more cost/benefit analyses, not fewer. There’s a difference between what we want and what we need.
As for “the massive funding gap the department’s [U.S. DOT] decision created,” that’s BS. How can a revenue source that’s never existed cause a “massive funding gap?” Pennsylvania’s executive and legislative branches generated the funding gap, no one else. They did this by spending too much of taxpayer paychecks elsewhere.
Something the editorial fails to note is the U.S. DOT likely would have approved tolling I-80 as long as the tolls would have been used only for the “care and feeding” of I-80. That wasn’t enough for PA, however. The Governor, General Assembly, and the Times want I-80 tolls to be used to transfer wealth from I-80 drivers to users of other roads and government-owned and run bus systems like BCTA and PAT.
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