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Alaska Town Calls 'Bridge to Nowhere' a Bridge to the Future
AP ^ | 10/8/5 | Rachel D'oro

Posted on 10/08/2005 3:07:12 AM PDT by Crackingham

Let others sneer at Southeast Alaska's so-called "bridge to nowhere." Leaders in Ketchikan, the small port town on the receiving end of the project, call it a bridge to the future. The $223 million two-bridge project would connect the town's airport to Revillagigedo Island, where most of the 13,000 residents of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough live. The airport is separated from its users by a quarter-mile-wide channel of water, forcing travelers to catch either a ferry or a water taxi.

Some Ketchikan leaders want to rename the airport after Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, for the all the federal money he's brought to the area, including the bridge. Young is chairman of the House Transportation Committee. But critics in Alaska and elsewhere say the funds earmarked for the bridge and some other projects in the federal transportation bill would be better spent on hurricane recovery.

Jack Shay, a member of the Ketchikan Borough Assembly who proposed the renaming the airport after Young, said he would have no problem deferring the funds for a year if the money is instead used on Gulf Coast projects. But he disagrees with opponents who say the bridge is a boondoggle.

"We've only been a state relatively short time, so we're way behind the other states," Shay said. "Don Young has been a great help catching us up with other states."

Young has said that the federal money helps build basic connections between communities in Alaska, just as the government long ago built connections between cities in the Lower 48 states.

"Because of its geographical location, Ketchikan has long been recognized as the 'Gateway to Alaska,'" Young wrote. "Yet the community is accessible only by air and sea and has run out of land."


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Alaska
KEYWORDS: bridgetonowhere; federalbudget; federalspending; ketchikan; spending
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To: Crackingham

A better project should be the Bering Straits bridge linking Russia and North America.

Roadway, high speed rail, and oil pipelines.

Whern can we start?


21 posted on 01/21/2006 5:59:48 PM PST by eleni121 ('Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!' (Julian the Apostate))
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To: Straight Vermonter
Federal funding of projects that are entirely local in scope is insane.

And the "limited government" Republican Party rammed it through and made sure this porkfest happened.

22 posted on 01/21/2006 6:02:38 PM PST by Hank Rearden (Never allow anyone who could only get a government job attempt to tell you how to run your life.)
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