Who Pays for Alabama’s $5 Billion ‘Zombie’ Highway Project? Not Alabama

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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Even though it’s poised to be the most expensive per-mile highway in Alabama—and perhaps the United States—there’s a lot the $5.4 billion Birmingham Northern Beltline project won’t do.

It won’t address any of Alabama’s largest traffic congestion problems, as identified by the Alabama Department of Transportation.

It’s not on the list of the state’s three most-needed interstate highway projects, as described by Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth.

It won’t reduce traffic through the city center by more than 3 percent, according to the Birmingham Regional Planning Commission.

But it will destroy thousands of acres of forest and require more than 90 crossings of rivers and streams that give the region its drinking water.

Jaak

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Here in the Portland area we’re spending $6 Billion on a new I-5 bridge across the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. Tolling will be a major source of funding.

About 10 years ago a similar $3 Billion project (with lower tolls) was quashed by a handful of activists who complained that the Light Rail component of the project was a “Crime Train” bringing the handful of black and brown people who live in Portland across the river to rape and pillage the White Supremacist neighborhoods in Clark County, WA.

The activists have been sitting in the stop-and-go traffic on the bridge for the past decade and now have a greater understanding of the costs in time & money of their opposition to the project. {{ LOL }}

Give them what they voted for – good and hard.

intercst

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Sounds completely reasonable to me.

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Your tax dollars at waste.

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I doubt the article is honest.

Highways that go through cities cause far more damage. Everyone moves down the highway. Poor people left behind. The suburbs pop up. Talk about wasted forest land.

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Politicians are so clever about spending those tax dollars. To enrich friends and get re-elected so they can do more of the same.

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