January 12, 2009

The ‘lightly used’ I 795

Posted at 3:56 PM by Stephen Jackson

Saturday’s story in the N and O documenting a federal report assessing the cost of repairing the botched paving job on I 795 between Wilson and Goldsboro was telling in two respects.

First, in the effort to save $2.8 million on a $196 million project, senior management ignored the advice of local engineers for thicker pavement. Cost to repair now: up to $22 million. It is a depressingly familiar story of an upper-management SNAFU at DOT.

The second telling point was the throw away fact towards the end of the piece:
“Traffic counts on the four lane freeway have been light — only 8600 cars and trucks a day.”

So why was this white elephant built?

Governor Perdue stripped the Board of Transportation from road building decisions today. Bravo. There is still much reform to be completed but this is a welcome step in the right direction. Is it too much to ask that the the new Secretary and engineers and transportation professionals at DOT now charged with these project decisions do the right thing and put a stop sign on multi-million dollar vanity projects? That need rather than patronage or ‘its our turn’ arguments be the chief criteria for getting the project green light?

Given the track record at DOT, we can’t be super confident that DOT will do a better job prioritizing projects than the Board. But the DOT certainly can’t be worse and should be a good deal better given the expertise in that organization. Mistake prone managers cannot be allowed to get in the way.

Whether the Fayetteville loop decison will be re-visited, potentially setting up a clash between the Governor and the legislature over the Board’s role in project prioritization, is one to watch.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • Ma.gnolia
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • YahooMyWeb
  • E-mail this story to a friend!

Comments

Add your comment

Please keep comments on topic and be respectful of other commenters. Inflammatory comments will be edited or removed.

Search

Previous Posts

  1. Moving Ahead
  2. Gratitude is My Attitude
  3. Mejia: Rethinking those perks and incentives
  4. The problem is not diversity, the problem is not enough diversity

NC Policy Watch