Below is CART's unpublished response to last Monday's bridge project cheerleading.

To the Editor of the Courier-Journal,

I would like to respond to Ed Glasscock of the “Build the Bridges Coalition” who complained in Monday’s CJ Readers Forum that the legislature didn’t pass legislation to fund the Bridges Project.  Mr. Glasscock’s main point is that we need these bridges for the jobs they create and the economic benefits that will occur from this investment. Unfortunately, Mr. Glasscock’s statistics are obsolete.  They are based upon the 1998 Bridges study and those figures were based upon data from the 1990’s.  They are no longer valid and certainly don’t reflect our needs in this century.

The important issues for today are energy resources and greenhouse gases, mobility for all citizen’s, jobs, and sustainability.  The International Energy Agency now assures us that oil prices will continue to stay high for the foreseeable future because the world has run out of the cheap and easy stuff.  Fewer and fewer citizens, because of age or economics, are able to use highways while demand for transit is growing.  Neither Kentucky nor the Federal Government can figure out how to pay for the maintenance of our existing roads and bridges, let alone the “mega-projects” like the Bridges.  These are the most expensive types of infrastructure to maintain.  These projects are also unsustainable in terms of emissions.  Trucks and autos are the least efficient way of moving people and goods and we need to find alternatives if we are to be economically competitive and preserve our environment.   If jobs are what Mr. Glasscock wants then he needs to realize that transit investments create far more permanent jobs per dollar spent than highway construction.  Conveniently for him, no one has bothered to study how tolls and/or higher fuel taxes will impact our economy.

The Bridges Project and the assumptions upon which it was based are obsolete.  Time for a new plan that will serve us rather than further impoverish us.  Time for a plan that will improve rather than worsen our oil dependence and climate problems.  The legislature must sense this and has acted accordingly.  We again, as we have for years, request a public discussion of these issues.