Two GOP Senators call the North SHore Connector a Waste (Denver: appointed, how much)

[bradjl2009]

In their report of stimulus waste, they spent 2 pages on how much of a waste and mismanagement the North Shore Connector. I do agree there could have been better ways to spend this money locally, but there were significantly more wasteful projects in the GOP's report than the connector.

GOP senators' report calls North Shore Connector a monumental waste

Brain O' Neil also has some opinions about this Subway tunnel is hardly a money pit.

[raubre]

Two things suprise me about this....

1. McCain commenting on the Connector project, considering he's from Arizona, I had no idea that he would even know about it.

2. I agree with him about it.

[ferraris]

The NSC was a waste, but it is all but finished now. We should make the best of it.

[BrianTH]

The irony is this was a plan conceived and adopted by two Republican County Commissioners and the members of the PAT board that they appointed. The vast bulk of the federal funding was secured by a mostly Republican congressional delegation, including two then-Republican Senators, during a Republican presidential administration. Some Democrats were involved here or there, but basically this was a Republican project.

As some may know, I'm not a big fan of this project and I think some of the criticisms are well-taken: in a nutshell, this money could have been much better spent. But with respect to the stimulus funding itself, once you have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it, it is easily worth $62.5 million to actually put the thing to use, as opposed to writing off all that prior spending and getting nothing at all to show for it.

Oh well--this won't be the last time we see people make historically revisionist, not particularly logical, arguments about the NSC for partisan political purposes.

[johnnytang24]

The arguments presented in the opinion article are perhaps the worst I've read. I think The Onion would have done a better job. This is my favorite gem from the article:

The North Shore Connector is our consolation prize. If the federal government didn't build it here, it would have built something equally expensive somewhere else.

Really? If we didn't spend the money, someone else would have.

[hnsq]

I don't understand why the north shore was chosen as a stop when effort into east-end connections might be better utilized, however I can understand why a tunnel was built rather than a bridge.

I read an article a while ago comparing the overall cost of subway tunnels to light rail systems. The article stated that while tunnels last literally hundreds of years with little upkeep, above ground light rail systems need to be completely rebuilt every 50-60 years or so. I don't know what research went into that statement, but if it is true, I am glad the money was spent on a subway rather than light rail. It might cost more now, but if it saves the city from having to do a complete rebuild of that particular line 50 years from now, isn't it worth the investment?

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by johnnytang24

Really? If we didn't spend the money, someone else would have.

The argument is that if the feds didn't spend that money here, they would have spent it elsewhere. And we pay federal taxes like everyone else, so if we don't get our fair share of federal transportation spending, we are just screwing ourselves.

I do think this argument requires some nuance. If you use your time machine to go back far enough, it is perhaps possible we could have planned a more useful project and gotten the feds to fund that instead. Or maybe not--like I noted above, this was a largely Republican project that got funded when the Republicans were totally in charge of the federal government, and so maybe a better project would have gotten passed over for partisan-political reasons.

[grimacista]

It is moronic to describe the stimulus money to the connector as a waste because without that, the project would be a tunnel between a pit downtown and a parking garage.

It is absolutely correct to call the entire project a waste. Yes, I know if we didn't use it, Seattle or Denver would have gotten the money, and yes I know that the feds don't fund this scale of project anymore - but truth be told, this project really serves no one. I never encountered a resident or tourist who just couldn't work up the energy to walk from Gateway or Wood St. across the Allegheny.

[BrianTH]

Using a tunnel might have been a good idea, but the route of the tunnel is a different matter: a tunnel straight across the river (for a route going straight into the North Side, as opposed to along the North Shore) would have been shorter, and presumably less expensive.

[johnnytang24]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

The argument is that if the feds didn't spend that money here, they would have spent it elsewhere. And we pay federal taxes like everyone else, so if we don't get our fair share of federal transportation spending, we are just screwing ourselves.

I do think this argument requires some nuance. If you use your time machine to go back far enough, it is perhaps possible we could have planned a more useful project and gotten the feds to fund that instead. Or maybe not--like I noted above, this was a largely Republican project that got funded when the Republicans were totally in charge of the federal government, and so maybe a better project would have gotten passed over for partisan-political reasons.

You can keep your partisan crap to yourself, because I don't care. The argument "if we don't use it, someone else will" is ridiculous. How about just leaving a surplus? How about giving the residents a refund? How about not taking the taxes at all?