We've got the wonderful BIDENOMICS working for us now....I would say that "ten percent for the big-guy" has increased substantially!
Posted on 04/04/2024 8:12:53 AM PDT by Red Badger
The effort to rebuild the recently collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge near Baltimore, Maryland, could quickly turn into a years-long quagmire as a result of environmental red tape under the Biden administration, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Baltimore Bridge was struck by a container ship navigating the Patapsco River out of the Port of Baltimore in late March, sending several cars and workers into the water and rendering the passageway unusable. It is unknown exactly how long the bridge could take to rebuild, as officials could expedite the process, but experts warned the DCNF that government red tape, such as environmental reviews filed by government entities or environmental activists, could slow down its construction after debris is cleared from the site and new plans for a replacement bridge are drawn up. +
“If the bridge gets special regulatory treatment, then five years is a reasonable timeline,” Ryan Young, senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. “There is some hope for this, based on last year’s collapse of a stretch of I-95 near Philadelphia. It reopened in 12 days, mostly thanks to red tape being waived. It would have taken months otherwise. Of course, that was a much smaller project.”
Following the disaster, the Biden administration announced that it would be sending $60 million to the city of Baltimore to assist in the clean-up and rebuilding, far from the sum needed to rebuild the project fully. President Joe Biden has also pledged to completely cover the cost of reconstructing the bridge, pending Congressional approval, according to Reuters.
An official cost of a new bridge has yet to be announced, but some estimates are around $500 million up to $1 billion, depending on the size and design of the project, according to the AP. The original bridge cost just $60.3 million to build, according to CNN.
“The Key Bridge recovery can take multiple paths, but the two we need to be keeping an eye on are first, where is the red tape around environmental historical preservation bogging down the efforts to help this community recover, and second, what coordination is occurring at the federal level to effect a more resilient recovery for the community, who’s looking at what the vision is, long term,” Brian Cavanaugh, visiting fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF.
A similar bridge disaster occurred in 1980, when a freighter struck the Sunshine Skyway in Tampa Bay, Florida, according to The Associated Press. Construction on a new bridge finished 7 years later, in 1987, 19 months later than it was originally projected to be complete and $20 million over budget.
“Federal and state regulations, including in Maryland, give NIMBYs and environmentalists a lot of ways to block projects,” Young told the DCNF. “Hopefully the Key Bridge’s high visibility will help them restrain their worst anti-development impulses, but that is no guarantee.”
Many large infrastructure projects are often bogged down by environmental reviews, such as California’s high-speed rail project, which has spent more than $600 million on environmental reviews since it was approved by voters more than 15 years ago.
“My fear here is that people can generate environmental reviews that they flag concerns for, say the oyster population or if there’s a bird that breeds in the Patapsco River or water quality,” Cavanaugh told the DCNF. “All these things could easily be triggered through a federal review process and would drag on. Those reviews are not always efficient. The efficacy of those is to be determined by others, but they’re certainly not expedited.”
The Biden administration has expanded the national environmental review framework, rolling back changes that the Trump administration made to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires federal agencies to review the environmental impacts of projects before approval. If the federal government remains involved in the project, environmental reviews may bog down the process, as the average NEPA environmental impact statement between 2010 and 2018 took 4.5 years to complete, halting construction completely, according to the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality.
“The rebuilding cost will almost certainly be higher than the original bridge, for several reasons, though I have no idea by how much,” Young told the DCNF. “A good rule of thumb is Edwards’ law—costs are usually at least double what officials first propose.”
Some analysts say that after cleaning up the site, creating new plans and building the bridge, the whole process could take up to a decade, according to WYPR, an outlet local to Baltimore. It took six years to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
“I fear that the cost of regulations is going to be more impactful than people are giving it credit for,” Cavanaugh told the DCNF. “Depending on what design they go with, like what birds fly in the area or what fish are in the Patapsco River, the cost of studying that and mitigating the negative impacts would be a problem. The mitigation measures to make the bridge more resilient and safe are going to be an added cost. But that’s an added cost not captured by inflation for any bridge built today.”
The Maryland Governor’s Office deferred the DCNF to statements made in previous press conferences. The White House did not immediately respond to a request to comment.
OK, glad you have it figured out.
The feeder road at the bottom will be replaced by a traffic circle.
The current bridge has a traffic light at that end that will go away. Traffic backs up for miles in the summer, both directions.....................
Exactly.
Blue State/Blue City = no delays
The centralization of power within the US Politburo is such that all environmental groups will be told what to do....and they will do it.
The left is more solid than ever.
America has the most expensive and bloated government money can buy.
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Oh Yeah? Try this.
Ukraine, business trip, probably fifteen-twenty years ago. Sitting in a restaurant looking at the menu. See a small stamp at the bottom with some initials written over it.
Ask one of my “minders” what’s this? He says the menus and refrigerators are inspected by the government to make sure the restaurant can make what’s on the menu.
That’s Too Much Government.
1977 may not be historical enough, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that got included as well. 🙂👍
Absolutely! Why build it! Dicktators need their 10% or is it 100% now.
“The feeder road at the bottom will be replaced by a traffic circle.”
That isn’t in the proposed picture. How a two or three lane traffic circle will work and improve things is beyond me.
Same here.
Along a popular drive near Fernandina beach Florida, they have been working on replacing a short bridge over a tidal area now for SIX years.
Not a draw bridge. Not an elevated roadway. Just a squat, little two lane bridge. Six years and it’s still not finished.
We've got the wonderful BIDENOMICS working for us now....I would say that "ten percent for the big-guy" has increased substantially!
And when it opened I recall sections of metal plates on its ceiling fallng down, right?
They will start a bus line just to say they have it for the lanes, and you say you have vans? That’s another lane each way, for a total of 20.
9th Wonder of the World.
Of course white people will not be allowed to use it, in the name of fairness, equity, and getting even racially.
Wheelchairs? How many wheelchairs will ever cross that bridge in its entire life?
Oh Juanita, oh Juanita, oh Jaunita, I call your name
who’s Juanita? Why that’s our first female, Hispanic illegal to become President……
Doesn’t matter. According to the ADA there must be accommodations for wheelchairs to pass each other. our city and county had to modify all their sidewalks at the intersections to allow wheelchairs to get onto and off of the side walks with ramps........
Our kids preschool was in a nice old farmhouse built around 1910. Our kids had been there for about three years when some parent with a disabled kid insisted we put in wheelchair ramp. After they got their way, the parents took their kid elsewhere.
A nice kitchen store in town had front and rear doors for 30 years. The back door required you to walk down three steps. It’s a short walk on the sidewalk from the rear of the store to the front of the store, so there’s no inconvenience for anybody. But one of those guys who makes a living out of pushing ADA lawsuits sued the store. They closed the back door so NOBODY could use it; then less than a year later went out of business.
Yes, some of the ceiling tiles in one of the off ramps tunnels coming from the airport into the central artery(I93) fell and killed some poor woman driving through in her car.
It actually was a huge improvement to the downtown Boston area. Now you can walk from Faniuel Hall all the way down to the harbor. Where there used to be this big ugly elevated three lane each way highway that separated the city.
It is also great when you drive in for a Sox game at Fenway. East on I90. Get off at the Prudential Center turn right and go into the parking garage.
Boston does not have a grid pattern street layout like NYC.
Boston has a dozen different neighborhoods with streets going in lots of different directions. It was first settled in 1620. The downtown section was basically an island surrounded by the Charles River, Mystic River and Boston Harbor. A big portion of the current city is land fill. The Back Bay section was part of the Charles River but had solid rock underneath. Which is why both the Prudential Tower(55) and John Hancock Building (60) were built there.
When we first moved into our present home in 2002, there was an elementary school across the street.
The local school board, in an effort to save money, changed the requirement to ride school busses to greater than 2 miles from the schools, others had to walk or parents drive them.
Our neighborhood, being unincorporated, had no sidewalks, so kids had to walk in the streets to get to school.
Some parents complained about that and the county said that they didn’t have enough money to build sidewalks.
So, they contacted our Congress-critter at the time and he was able to get some federal matching funds to build sidewalks. So the County could come up with half & the feds the other half. It came to around $2 million total.
So that summer, while school was out, they built the new sidewalks, all ADA specifications of course.
Meanwhile, the School Board found out that the roof was in poor condition and needed to be replaced, an at cost of a million dollars.
Still trying to save money, they decided that the school was not worth repairing so they closed the school and split the students to two other schools.
So no students ever used these brand new ADA spec sidewalks to get to school.
But wait! There’s more!
The next summer, the Water and Sewer Department had to replace all the underground old cast iron pipes with new PVC pipes, so all those brand new sidewalks had to be torn up to install the new pipes! And of course they had to replace the sidewalks when they were finished!
The school and its land was sold to a developer for $800k who promptly tore the whole thing down and built 40 new homes on the property, at a average cost of $350K+ each..........................
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