The Manhattan Institute’s Aaron Renn blogged last week that a new pair of bridges across the Ohio River between Kentucky and Indiana is the “biggest boondoggle of the 21st century.” Renn calls these $1.3 billion bridges a boondoggle because they doubled the capacity of the previous Interstate 65 bridge across the river, yet after they opened traffic declined by nearly 50 percent.
Traffic fell this much because the states decided to pay for the new bridges partly by tolling them. This pushed traffic to other nearby bridges that remain untolled. As a traffic survey makes clear — but Renn glosses over — overall cross-river traffic grew just as the states predicted when they decided new bridges were needed. So the problem is not that the bridges weren’t needed but that the other bridges remain unpriced.
The Manhattan Institute supports free markets, so it should also support tolling. It is possible that variable-priced tolling of all the Ohio River bridges near Louisville could have eliminated congestion without immediately adding to bridge capacity, but traffic would continue to grow and eventually the states might need to use the collected tolls to expand capacity.
So it appears to the Antiplanner that the new bridges were so much a boondoggle as they were poorly priced. Either the tolls for the new bridges were set too high or the other bridges should also have been tolled. Unfortunately, most politicians are afraid of tolling existing roads and at best will only support tolling new capacity. Thus, the only way to alleviate congestion in Ohio River bridges was to build new bridges, which would also be the only ones where tolling was politically acceptable.
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In any case, even if congestion pricing of Ohio River bridges could have prevented the need for new bridges, the $1.3 billion spent on those bridges is hardly the biggest boondoggle of the 21st century. For completed works, I’d have to say that Los Angeles’ $2.4 billion Expo light-rail line extension, which saw a loss of more than 15 bus riders for every new light-rail rider, would be far ahead of the Ohio River bridges.
For uncompleted projects, the California high-speed rail line takes the prize. The state is already spending about $10.8 billion building a stretch that was supposed to cost just $6 billion. If the state ever completes it, the line will become notable mainly for attracting passengers away from profitable airlines to unprofitable trains.
So were the I-65 bridges a boondoggle? Maybe, especially if you consider the alternative of tolling all of the existing bridges to be viable. Worst boondoggle of the 21st century? Not even close.
I’m a supporter of road pricing. However I’m not convinced that it is an unalloyed joy.
Suppose we have three towns or cities, of the same size, labelled A, B, C.
A is on one side of the river, and B is on the other side, C also on the other side and the same distance from B as A.
If we then apply a charge on the bridge, A and B are forced further apart, and relatively speaking B and C are brought closer together. Is that what the people & businesses in place A want?
“If they get the pricing right”
They won’t. Socialists can’t. See: impossibility of socialist price calculation.
I admire Mr. Renn’s work. But as his piece points out, he’s always been opposed to the projects. These are not bridges but 2 separate freeway projects. The bridge in question downtown, the new bridge itself was only projected to cost $200 million. Most of the costs of the project downtown was to build the interchange were 3 freeways come together.
The added capacity is an opportunity of for Louisville to shut down the old I64 freeway along the river west of I65. That can now be re-routed over either I65 or I265. Mr. Renn doesn’t recognize how this could transform entire neighborhoods of the city that are – according to his standards in regards to I65 and NuLu- cut off from the river.
I’m not sold on the idea that the tolling is the issue. Gas prices in 2013 were much higher than 2018, often time more than $1.20 / gallon higher. With the drop in gas prices giving people more disposable income, why would paying $1.38 lead to a drop in traffic?
As Mr. O’Toole pointed out, the change in overall crossings is not meaningful. In fact, I would point out in the KY study that the I64 bridge westbound evening rush hour crossings have an increase. Note that the primary cost of the dowtown project was not the bridge but redesigning the antiquated, unsafe Kennedy interchange. It would appear that now that the interchange has been greatly improved, some of the traffic that was crossing on I65 is now continuing west on I64 and crossing on the Sherman bridge.
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Most importantly, think of the implications of this in terms of induced demand. For eons, ultra left urbanistas have moaned that more road capacity just _creates_ more traffic. Yet here we’ve doubled the capacity and traffic is fallen. What’s the magic difference? Charging drivers the equivalent of gas station nachos. Viola!
Don’t worry they’ll just toll the other bridges to make up the costs for the new ones…That’s how they pay for everything else.
When World Trade Center 1 opened it cost so much money the Port Authority hiked bridge and tunnel tolls to pay for it.
What’s happening here isn’t just financial irresponsibility, govt’s never been shy about that. However they cant cook the books anymore or lie to the public about why X amount of service costs Y amount of money.
Many states and cities are entering the point of no return in it’s horrible financial management. So the Ghost of Christmas future; What you’re gonna see is more of as government agencies undergo fiscal strain is the Tax/Fee/Fine era. We’ve already seen this manifest.
Taxes will rise; undoubtedly. New sources of tax revenue will arise. Fee’s for things like parks and such will rise or fee’s for what used to be largely free will emerge. And of course the cost of fines will rise. police agencies will be in a money making position with tickets galore. Instead of enforcing the law, investigating crimes and establishing public order, they’ll be raping your wallets. Looking for excuses to fine and ticket. If an illegal alien dumps hazardous waste in a public pond, it’s a losing issue cause you gotta hire translator, legal counsel, pay to clean up the site of potentially toxic material, test the water, blah blah blah That all costs taxpayer money.
But a yuppie with a cell phone, a non-recyclable foam coffee cup riding in a Lexus who didn’t signal, that’s a money making opportunity. Why, cause the Police are just like any government agency like transit agencies; they have huge public pension liabilities they have to pay into annually and they cant because their broke.
Where does the linked traffic analysis report an increase in overall cross-river traffic? On page 7, Table 3.2 reports a 2% decrease in the total number of cross-river trips. On page 8, Table 3.3 describes an increase in “interstate” traffic, but it seems to be referring to traffic on the interstate highways close to the bridges, rather than travel between states. It’s a long analysis so I could have missed something, but that’s the portion of the analysis that seemed most relevant. It seemed like a summary of all the data that came in later parts of the analysis.