Bridge Collapse Revives Issue of Road Spending: Politically-popular projects trump maintenance

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT, page one, lead: Bridge Collapse Revives Issue of Road Spending
By SUSAN SAULNY and JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: August 7, 2007

MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 6 — In the past two years, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota twice vetoed legislation to raise the state’s gas tax to pay for transportation needs. Now, with at least five people dead in the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge here, Mr. Pawlenty, a Republican, appears to have had a change of heart.

“He’s open to that,” Brian McClung, a spokesman for the governor, said Monday of a higher gas tax. “He believes we need to do everything we can to address this situation and the extraordinary costs.”

Even as the cause of the bridge disaster here remains under investigation, the collapse is changing a lot of minds about spending priorities. It has focused national attention on the crumbling condition of America’s roadways and bridges — and on the financial and political neglect they have received in Washington and many state capitals.

Despite historic highs in transportation spending, the political muscle of lawmakers, rather than dire need, has typically driven where much of the money goes. That has often meant construction of new, politically popular roads and transit projects rather than the mundane work of maintaining the worn-out ones.

Further, transportation and engineering experts said, lawmakers have financed a boom in rail construction that, while politically popular, has resulted in expensive transit systems that are not used by a vast majority of American commuters....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/us/07highway.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin