It is noteworthy that the Democrat administrations scan the political horizon before spending money on projects such as RT 113. This time is no different. In fact, they have headlined the “show” with a grand announcement today in Berlin where two of O'Malley's top supporters received top billing on their news release: Senator Jim Mathias and Delegate Norm Conway.
While Norm and Jim take a bow, let’s consider this “carrot on a string” approach to highway safety. Since this project began, if the state had merely paved 1 mile per year it would have been completed over 20-years ago. At the current rate (with all the optimism one can muster), this project could take another 15-20 years for completion.
If Highway User Revenues were distributed to actually build roads and bridges, we would be talking about the new project to 4-lane RT 90 into Ocean City, and the days of our family members traveling on a 2-lane version of RT 113 would be a distant memory. Sadly, that is not the case.
The lion’s share of our Highway User Revenues is going to fund Mass Transit Projects like the Red Line and the Purple Line in the metropolitan areas of our state. Even though only 6% of our population uses these systems, they receive over half of our transportation funding.
We have an abysmal rate of fare recovery in Baltimore City for the bus system/mass transit (we pay roughly 80%) and we paid out hundreds of millions for the ICC which is not receiving the traffic counts projected. The failure to require a revenue stream from the metro core to pay for mass transit projects is appalling. In fact, we are the only state in the Union that does not have such a mechanism.
So as we celebrate another 5 miles of paving on one of our highest traffic count roadways for commerce and tourism, let us not forget that these are mere scraps that fall to us from the king’s table every election year.
6 comments:
I love how our Government keeps FINDING money for whatever they want to use it for. Too bad the citizens are the ones always footing the bill! Just come out and say "Oh yeah remember when we taxed you for A, B, and C, but we never actually used the money for that, well we are gonna use it for X Y Z now!
Mike McDermott has squarely presented to the people exactly what goes.
His only error was, he could have left out the "Democrat" part because this is the political landscape of both parties, no offense to him who has otherwise been a straight shooter from the beginning.
Everybody's friend Jim and his superior Mr Chairman Conway sure do know how to play to the masses-what do the teachers think about this "found" money and the "loan" taken from their pensions?
James Mathias is worming his way to the top at the expense of his constituents.
Can someone explain his power influence over The Daily Times reporter Jennifer Shutt?
spot on. thank you for the post.
As they continue to steal money that should go to the Cities and Counties. Pay it back to the local jurisdictions
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