Not long after President-elect Barack Obama proposed a massive new infrastructure program to stimulate the U.S. economy, members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors hopped into the bailout line, right behind Wall Street tycoons and Detroit automakers. The mayors asked for $73.1 billion to fund 11,391 “infrastructure” pork projects – including such critically needed facilities as a a dog park, a lifestyle center and several sports complexes. These boondoggles will add to taxpayers’ growing indebtedness without seriously addressing their cities’ real needs, mainly roads and bridges.
A 2006 study by a professor at the University of North Carolina, David Hartgen, found that just $21 billion a year – less than a third of the sum requested by the mayors – could virtually eliminate traffic congestion in all of their cities if invested in targeted projects that increased urban highway capacity. As Reason Foundation founder Robert Poole noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, that’s less than the nation is now spending on transportation. Some of the stimulus money could also be used for cheap, clean, flexible bus rapid transit, solving most of the mayors’ pressing transportation problems.
Funding such infrastructure projects would be a real change, but alas, they’re not what we are likely to get. Of the nation’s 19 largest metro areas, 17 plan to spend a grossly disproportionate share of their long-term transportation dollars on mass transit. For example, Los Angeles allocated 50 percent to transit even though less than 5 percent of Angelinos use it. The imbalance is even worse in metropolitan Washington, where transit will gobble up 60 percent of regional transportation spending by 2030 even though less than 3 percent of daily commuters take Metro.
And the Federal Transit Administration recently approved $900 million for a $6 billion Dulles Rail Metrorail extension through Tyson’s Corner to the airport. This debacle will cost taxpayers an estimated $25 billion to build, operate and maintain over the next 40 years. But gridlock will still be a daily nightmare, according to official projections. Dulles Rail also includes an unprecedented level of local funding, as 95 percent will come out of the pockets of Fairfax and Loudoun County residents. There were no public hearings when Dulles Toll Road users, who won’t share the project’s benefits, were slapped with $3 billion in construction costs (50 percent) and 75 percent of any overruns by unelected and unaccountable airports officials. The relative handful of wealthy Tysons Corner developers with land along the rail route will make billions following their modest $400 million contribution to construction costs.
