Fuel taxes and Roads Funding: Michigan is a Mess

[MNgopher]

When I see all the complaints about roads, I often wonder if the folks making the complaints assume that the designers have unlimited budgets, work in an environment with zero political pressure, or in my states case, understand that as a state agency, we also have to get local consent from the municipality when we make improvements.

In other words, it isn't as simple as they don't know what they are doing. I won't even begin to tell you the number of projects we've had to downguage in response to one of those three concerns, resulting in "the designers don't know what they are doing" claims...

 

[PandaBear]

When I see all the complaints about roads, I often wonder if the folks making the complaints assume that the designers have unlimited budgets, work in an environment with zero political pressure, or in my states case, understand that as a state agency, we also have to get local consent from the municipality when we make improvements.

In other words, it isn't as simple as they don't know what they are doing. I won't even begin to tell you the number of projects we've had to downguage in response to one of those three concerns, resulting in "the designers don't know what they are doing" claims...

In a way, the numbers always balance out in the end.

Starting out with a greenfield development, borrow money for the infrastructure, build the community and sell the properties, then the owners get to enjoy it with borrowed money (mortgage) for that time.

By the time the community aged and infrastructure needs to be replaced, the original buyers already moved on to another new community. The new owners do not have the money to pay for all the infrastructure replacement and do not want to borrow money for it, so the downward spiral begins. There is no going back until it becomes greenfield again.

We are in a disposable economy.

 

[M56959]

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