Posted on 11/16/2005 3:56:13 PM PST by redpoll
I've had it with the phrase "Bridges to Nowhere." Someone has to speak up for Alaskans.
I've lived in Ketchikan and the Mat-Su valley, two of the places next to "nowhere." Ketchikan is a thin strip of roadway on a mountain cliff next to the ocean. The bridge would connect Ketchikan to the island next door, which has many square miles of flat land that could be developed for the benefit of the community. The Knik Arm bridge connects Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, with the Mat-Su valley, Alaska's fastest growing community. Calling the Knik Arm bridge a bridge to "nowhere" is either stupidity or willful disregard of the facts.
Do these places deserve more roads? Look at a map of Alaska. Look at the towns. Now look at the roads connecting them. Most of the state has no roads at all. The village where I'm typing this is 280 miles from the nearest road. As a result, a trip to Wal-Mart costs me $500 on a small plane to Fairbanks. A gallon of milk costs $12 at the local grocery store. Gas is running at $4.20 a gallon. A road between my village and Fairbanks would radically reduce the cost of living, as well as help connect us to the rest of the economy of North America. Of course, building the road would mean a road to "nowhere."
The critics of the bridges have their arguments backwards. Gravina Island, located next to Ketchikan, has 50 residents because the only way to get there right now is by boat. Since there is no infrastructure, there are no residents. You need to build the infrastructure first to get the residents. The Knik Arm bridge will connect a relatively unpopulated section of the Mat-Su valley to Anchorage; it will also turn a 60-minute commute from Wasilla into a 20-minute drive. You don't often find commuters "nowhere."
There is a long tradition in this country of building infrastructure with government funding to boost local economies. The Cumberland Road went "nowhere" at first. The railroads in the 19th century went through vast expanses of "nowhere." The Golden Gate bridge connected San Francisco to "nowhere," the undeveloped sections of Marin County. The Mackinac Straits bridge went from lower Michigan to "nowhere." A lot of the interstate highway system goes "nowhere."
Sure, there are boondoggles, from the C and O Canal to the poorly built dikes around New Orleans. On the other hand, there's Hoover Dam and the George Washington Bridge. A good argument could be made that one of the things that government does well is build infrastructure; certainly the founders had that in mind when one of the specific duties of government was the construction of "post roads" and other infrastructure to help commerce.
It would help Ketchikan to have a bridge connecting that city to Gravina Island. It would help Southeast to have a road connecting most of the towns there, too. It would help Alaska to have roads connecting Nome and Bethel and Barrow to Fairbanks, too. (The Knik Arm bridge would cut one hour off the trip between Anchorage and Fairbanks.)
Of course, if nothing is done, no roads are build, no bridges allowed to connect our communities with the rest of the state, most of the state will remain "nowhere." Villages will languish in poverty. Economies will have nowhere to grow. Notice that the first thing that they had to do when oil was developed at Prudhoe Bay was build a road. The road went "nowhere" until the trucks rolled up the road, built the pipeline, and put in the oil derricks.
These are not "bridges to nowhere." They're a needed part of the development of the state. We could argue about cost and design, certainly, but the need for more roads, bridges, and infrastructure here is obvious.
Deal, just let us control our land to produce the oil and gas. We will even send the feds part of the money.
We're leaving you alone as regards these bridges. So I guess you can go ahead and build 'em.
Elect new legislators!
>>>Near bye in Washington they are getting about $84 per capita in the special "earmarked" projects, compared with $1,448 for each Alaskan.
Move
Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act on July 1, 1862, hoping to bind the Union's East and West. The Pacific Railway Act gave each company loans from the Treasury of $16,000 for each mile of track laid in the flat plains, $32,000 for each mile of track laid in the Great Basin, and $48,000 for each mile of track laid in the mountains. It also provided for each company to receive 10 sections (6,400 acres) of public land grants, mineral rights excluded, on each side of the track for each mile of track built. In 1864 a second Pacific Railway Act was passed increasing the land grants for each company to 20 sections per mile. In total, the companies received 33 million free acres of land. The second Pacific Railway Act also gave the companies rights to the iron and coal deposits on the land grants and moved the federal loans to second-mortgage status so that the Union Pacific and Central Pacific could issue first-mortgage bonds for sale to private investors.
>>>>How much federal tax money went into each of those projects. Try Zero.
You don't understand, spending federal dollars was worthwhile when they were developing the lower 48. But Alaska should pay their own way; and they are not allowed access to most of the resouces that would actually let them pay for it.
If you don't like Alaska's remoteness, then move. Idiot. If there's not roads, bridges, or modern conveniences leading to or in your village/town/whatever and you don't like it, then move to a more acceptable town. Don't expect the rest of the United States to shell out money for your stupidity and stubborness. If you want a bridge, road, or whatever bad enough, then pay for it yourself.
If you don't like Alaska's remoteness, then move. Idiot. If there's not roads, bridges, or modern conveniences leading to or in your village/town/whatever and you don't like it, then move to a more acceptable town. Don't expect the rest of the United States to shell out money for your stupidity and stubborness. If you want a bridge, road, or whatever bad enough, then pay for it yourself.
I think Alaska has no sales tax and no income tax. It's some kind of chutzpah for Alaskans who pay no state taxes to come to the federal gov't (me and every other non-alaskan) begging for money.
Anchorage has a pier. You could launch a Zodiac from there. It had more of a deep water dock before the earthquake mucked it up permanently. There is also Valdez, a mere 200 miles from the metro area over the mountains. Seward is also a port of sorts. You'd think with a brazillion miles of coastline the state would have a decent deep water port. One of these days.
New York doesn't get any Federal money . Nope, not a penny. Got to wonder why they bother sending a couple of Senators to DC if they are so ineffective.
Alaska is mostly undeveloped because the Captains of Industry, coal, steel, lumber, etc., want it that way. Oil is a special case, they will go for that wherever they find it.
I say come up with a plan to fund the bridge by selling some of that excess Federal Land up there...to developers, etc.
If the Federal government would allow private ownership of land greater than the current 1%, we would do a better job of producing our own revenue.
Deal, even just lease it. Why are we considered the nation park?
Gross summary:
- A military general decided we needed a fast way to move troops/supplies anywhere in the country
- Pols saw the idea as an incredible make-work project with tangible benefit
- An astounding amount of private property was confiscated (emminent domain, ya know)
- An astounding amount of money was confiscated (taxes promoting general welfare, ya know)
- A significant part was handled at the state level (Golden Gate Bridge, NY Thruway, etc.)
A key factor is that it links high-financial-density areas together for rapidly traversing the "nowhere" in between; the endpoints are "somewhere", not "nowhere". There is a lot of nice "nowhere" in this country; I don't support building bridges there either.
Ever wonder WHO paid for it???
Taxpayers under threat of imprisonment or death, of course.
Maybe we've finally had enough of that.
Of course you never use it, right?
Better question: "Of course you never demand that the gov't add a stretch to that personally special yet largely inaccessable and rarely visited location, right?" Answer: no.
Yes, the interstate highway system is there and I use it ... and I often ponder the heavy cost others paid for it. I do not encourage further expansion, and I mourn the price citizens paid & question the cost.
Actually, the interstate highway system has probably done more to promote the "red vs. blue" dichotomy oft discussed on FR. By making it easy to get to the most desireable locations, less desireable (even just slightly so) locations suffered and faded. My hometown being dubbed "Crossroads of New York" intersecting two nice country roads (NY 20 & 11) is now little more than a rest stop & suburb, as travellers scream by on I-81.
Upshot & insight: by actually building your much-desired "bridge to nowhere", you might actually get the opposite-of-desired effects - either those there decide it's just easier to leave permanently, or the growth from easy acces overwhelms & wrecks exactly what you live there for. And at what cost? a nine-digit pricetag benefiting whom, and at what cost to the rest of us? of course every "pork" project can be justified by someone; add them all up and it all looks really expensive and really wasteful.
New York built its Thruway on its own dime, paid for by users thereof.
Shall the "bridge to nowhere" be built, charging the proper $43 per car crossing?
Actually, I'd rather swap. He doesn't need a bridge, he needs a couple travel tickets - one for him, one for me.
Anyway, the road systems in this country are paid for by all, traveled by all.
If anyone lives in "nowhere" next to "nothing" you do and perhaps it is you that should move. LOL
Perhaps my wording should have been more precise. There was no tax money giveaway on those projects.
The land given away wasn't purchased with tax dollars. It was taken from the Indians (Or, in some cases, not yet taken from the Indians. So there was no cost to the taxpayers in giving away what was, at the time, worthless land.
And loans are loans - they aren't a giveaway.
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