"Bridges to Nowhere" is a cute, meaningless sound bite

myself | 16 Nov 2005 | redpoll

[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.

[GAAC]

Gravina is anything but flat, dude, I know, because I worked on Gravina for 7 years.

[FreedomCalls]

I can imagine someone in Baltimore circa 1790 saying, "Why should I help develop the Midwest?" Or someone back east circa 1840 saying the same thing about California.

They did. That's why the railroads (private companies) were given checkerboarded land grants on either side of the railroads they (privately) built with their own money -- not federal money. The deal was that they would get the land and if development came later because of the railroad infrastructure then both the government land and the ceded railroad land would rise in price and it could be sold off to the benefit of both. The government didn't pay directly to build the railroads through the west -- private capital did.

Example of land grant ownership in a "checkerboard" pattern. This shows a portion of the original Union Pacific land grant, just north of Laramie, Wyoming. It is quite typical of other railroad land grants. The small squares are one-square mile "sections." The rail line appears slightly off-center, because the modern track alignment was improved over the original. From: Railroad Land Grants

[hosepipe]

You are reacting to a comment made by redpoll, I just quoted it..

[RockinRight]

Even a toll road would dramatically improve things. Why not have the State of Alaska foot the bill, not the Feds, then have it be a toll road?

Sounds like a reasonable solution to this Ohioan.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 11/16/2005. Thanks redpoll.

[curth]

If the people want the bridge, see just how badly they want it. Ask the good citizens if they would give up their yearly Permanent Fund checks to pay for it. Last year each person got $1,281.00. Population is 710,231. If my math is correct, that comes out to $909,805,911. Plenty of dough there to build a bridge and it won’t cost the state one additional cent.