Obama’s Stealth Transportation Bill

In order to highlight the need for a new transportation bill, President Obama is visiting the Tappan Zee Bridge today (which, ironically, is likely to increase delays to commuter). Tappan Zee is one of about 10,000 bridges that–like the Skagit River bridge that collapsed almost a year ago–is considered “fracture critical,” meaning the destruction of one key part could lead the entire bridge to fall down. However, the state of New York is currently building a replacement bridge that will not have this fault.


The destruction of just one part of this bridge could cause the entire center span to collapse. On the other hand, the bridge has lasted 59 years, and probably could last quite a few more without anything destroying one of the fracture-critical parts. The bridge may be in poor condition for a number of reasons, but being fracture-critical is not one of them. Flickr photo by waywuwei.

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If you read last Friday’s Antiplanner, then you already know this, as well as the Antiplanner’s opinion that Obama’s bill is really just a part of the administration’s effort to change American lifestyles. I hope at least some members of Congress will see it for what it is: not a way to build infrastructure or even a way to fund pork barrel, but an enticement for metropolitan planners to make single-family housing unaffordable and highways more congested in order to force more people to live in multi-family housing and ride transit.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

3 Responses to Obama’s Stealth Transportation Bill

  1. LazyReader says:

    Politicians won’t let the roads crumble, what will their limos drive on???

  2. bennett says:

    “I hope at least some members of Congress will see it for what it is…”

    What every you may think “it” is, you can be sure that almost nobody in congress will see it. Nothing in congress these days has to do with the merits of any particular idea or legislation.

  3. MJ says:

    So it’s a toll bridge with about 135,000 daily crossings. I’m pretty sure I can figure out a solution to this one that doesn’t require the Obama Cavalry to come in and offer more ‘free’ federal money and the strings that typically come with it.

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