Where are we spending our transportation dollars again? Oh, that’s right — trains.
A new Spotlight report from Daren Bakst notes that North Carolina has over 5,000 bridges that are considered deficient by federal standards. No, Fix the Roads First: How N.C. has taken transportation out of transportation policy also notes that state and local officials do not have actual mobility of the population as the primary aim of transportation spending — if it is a concern at all.
Also, Mecklenburg County now has 52 bridges each of which carry at least 10,000 vehicles a day that are classified as deficient by the Federal Highway Administration. If you figure just over one person per vehicle, that’s 572,000 people each day who drive on unsafe bridges in Mecklenburg.
Put another way, that is over 4 million people a week rolling the dice on our neglected road network
But by all means, lets spend on money on giant “art” disks and light up canopies for the light rail line.
Meanwhile, News14 reports that lights along a busy stretch of I-77 remain out. NC DOT claims to be on it, which means figure a fix long about 2011.
Which reminds me, How many NC DOT engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? No one knows, fill out a form and they’ll get back to you.
Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Or until I die in a bridge collapse.
