Transit Policy of the Undead!
by Tony Chavira
The News Hour with Jim Lehrer has an awesome episode about something they call “Zombie Highways,” which are basically highway projects that seem to last forever and never want to die (at the ultimate expense of public transportation systems). Some projects are fifty years old and still can’t be killed! What exactly makes up a Zombie Highway project, you ask?
Let me answer that question with a hypothetical: Let’s pretend that the federal government has a program to help you improve your house or apartment. Lawmakers in Washington promise that for every dollar that you put up for construction, they’ll give you four dollars. It doesn’t matter how expensive the project turns out to be –- you’ll get four bucks in subsidies for every dollar that comes out of your own pocket. Until the project is finished.
In that case, would you ever have an incentive to finish your home improvement project? Or would the project keep shambling forward, like an extra in a George Romero film?
Check out the episode here, because you KNOW stuff like this is happening in California right now:
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