Wow,
this is a lot of nerve and if true, would be really really disgusting.
Transportation leaders missed an opportunity to jump-start mass transit in Florida and to repair existing roads and bridges, he said. "The problem is our transportation leaders do not have vision," said Ashwell. The department defended the request. DOT spokesman Dick Kane said Congress requested the stimulus funds be tied not to mass transit but highway and bridge projects that can start within 90 to 120 days. "The whole idea of the stimulus package was to have projects ready to go," he said.
Looks like Florida has about $13 billion in
transit projects at some stage. You can't tell me that some of these can't be ready to go. Sounds like excuses to me.
5 comments:
What a joke.
Complain to your congressman about this.
What's misleading about it is, which projects are ready to go and are worthy projects.
Some like Silver Line BRT Phse 3 tunnel in Boston is a dog of a transit project that makes little sense.
There is no question that DOTs are biased toward road projects, although it varies by state whether this is a complete or partial bias. Florida's DOT is almost completely biased toward roads; anyone who's spent time in the state can readily see this. Incoincidentally, the DOT spends more per capita than nearly any other state.
Letting DOTs, which are really still Highway Departments (in all 50 states), make the bulk of the requests for the stimulus package guaranteed this outcome would occur.
A more rational approach would have been to have MPOs make the request for all MSAs, and DOTs for all rural areas, with a pre-determined apportionment between the two based on population or other factors.
So far, transportation does not appear to be an policy in which "Change" is coming to.
A large part of the problem is the availability of funds immediately to build projects... but no guarantee of maintenance and costs to run transit systems. Highways therefore end up being the safe bet because most of their cost is up front.
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