After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete, But so what? It’s time for better things

95 is a road that many of us know all too well. One of the reasons we know it so well is because we so often drive it at such low speeds.

We get to see every pothole and jersey wall up close and in detail.

Few things in the universe are more crony than the US interstate system. Consider all of the contracts, and the contractors, and the back room deals, and the zoning requirements, and the eminent domain, and the union guys, and the DMVs, and the DOTs and the taxes, and the tolls. It boggles the mind.

Of course Bloomberg takes this a moment to explain to us that for some reason we are supposed to pour more taxpayer money into “infrastructure.”

Don’t fall for that old song. It’s time to do new things with transport, not burden taxpayers even more. Think private trains. Think private roads. Think flying cars. Think hoverboards (no kidding they exist), think jet boards (which also exist and could fly people into and out of the city.)

But hey, I-95 is “done.” Hooray?

(From Bloomberg)

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, which oversees the I-95 Interchange Project, said the new infrastructure—which includes the creation of flyover ramps, toll plaza facilities, environmental mitigation sites, intersections, six overhead bridges, widened highways and new connections to the New Jersey and Pennsylvania turnpikes—will be open to the public by Sept. 24.

“The benefit of completing this ‘missing link’ is mobility,” said Carl DeFebo, the director of public relations at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. The new infrastructure will reduce traffic time for north- and south-bound travelers and ease congestion on local roads that used to connect I-95 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

It’s time to rethink these big infrastructure projects altogether. Like the now very long in the tooth welfare state, massive highways and dams and government layered concrete are vestiges of another less informed time. There are much better things straight ahead. So long as the cronies in government and outside of it don’t screw things up. (They will try.)

Click here for the article.

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/