Just briefly, saw a couple news stories about Rt. 101 in New Hampshire being the first project funded by the Stimulus package to get underway. The project involves repaving 9.5 miles of Rt. 101. The final bid accepted for the project is happily touted as being "under-budget." For that reason, I thought the job was already completed. But it turns out, they just started it.
Ray LaHood, apparently a politician from New Hampshire, helped turn over the first shovelful of dirt to start the project. When I was an editor, we used to get at least a half-dozen photos a month of corporate executives all standing around with chrome-finished hard hats gleaming in the sun, wearing suits-and-ties, gold-plated shovels in hand, celebrating the new plant or HQ or something. I used to call these "Men With Shovels" shots. Oh well....
We'll see if the New Hampshire project is still under-budget when it's been completed. And, by the way, when it is completed, what are the contractors and workers going to do? I mean, how long can it take to repave 9.5 miles of highway?
If New Hampshire workers operate at the same rate as highway workers in the Chicago area, they can conceivably stretch this project out to three or four years. It took at least that long to build a new on-ramp to an interstate near my home. I could have done it quicker on my own with a teaspoon and a couple bags of blacktop, but then I didn't even bid on it.
But to get back to the main topic: What are these New Hampshire people going to do when the project is done?
Since the job was under-budget (as bid) by about $2 million, maybe they could do a parking lot or something, too.
And then....????
That's the trouble with goverment projects. They aren't ongoing concerns, they aren't self-sustaining through profitability. You do them and they're done, and then you go home.
So maybe a hundred people will get union-scale pay for however long this one job lasts, and they'll be able to pay their mortgages, they'll be buying lunches and coffee from local vendors, etc etc., for maybe a month or two, if they're honest about it.
And then....????
That's the trouble with government projects.
It's been said that in Chicago, we have two seasons: winter and construction. What amazes me is that the highways are continuously torn up and they never seem to be completed. Ever. Honestly, I know so many back roads into Chicago it's positively amazing, and back roads and alleys are really the only way to get around the city. All the main boulevards and avenues have things planted in them. Really. Take a nice broad avenue and reduce it down to one lane in each direction with brown and dying foliage on a median strip in the middle separating them. It's called "beautification." I think it was supposed to be Mayor Daley's wife's idea. She didn't like Meigs Airport, either. And it's gone now.
In addition, a main artery near my home (six lanes, and right off the interstate) was repaved last year -- or at least the worst parts of it were. Included in that project was an overpass over the interstate, which has been torn up, the lanes rerouted with cement abutments for about a year now. It's like, don't try driving this at night, because there are no lights on it, and driving through these cement barriers is like winding through a Chinese maze. Anyway... They haven't finished that overpass yet, which seems to be part of the artery repave job, and all that new repaving on the artery has already degenerated into major potholes.
So maybe the object really is to not EVER finish it. Just keep pouring more and more and more money into it, do a crappy job that falls apart as soon as possible, so when you finally finish the bridge, you can start repaving the artery again.
Somehow, I don't get it.
But I just love it when they have the signs out: YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.
Yeah, right, my tax dollars. Not so sure about the "work" part, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment