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.