Post-Gazette columnist Brian O’Neill served up a pithy – and deadly accurate – skewer of the latest government transportation fantasia last week with word of a multimillion-dollar study:
“The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission will spend $2 million it doesn’t have to study a scheme to transport people and freight in pods going more than 500 miles per hour between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.”
O’Neill recounts Greater Pittsburgh’s less than flattering history of spending (or being the conduit for state and federal spending) on such boondoggles as Skybus and magnetic-levitation trains (Maglev).
But the Turnpike Commission’s involvement in the proposed “hyperloop” project is particularly galling because of the pickle its embroiled in – billions of dollars in debt because of a state mandate in contravention of federal law that funnels turnpike receipts to non-turnpike projects.
And it is with the same General Assembly where the blame for this latest waste of precious resources should rest. For it mandated the study.
But the early “line” is that hyperloop is about as impractical as was Maglev. Perhaps next the Legislature can order up a study to weigh the efficacy of attaching rocket engines to bicycles.
There’s cautionary good news out of Washington in the continuing effort to fix the nation’s severely ailing system of locks and dams so vital to commerce.
The White House’s latest budget proposal calls for $111 million to complete rehabilitation of such projects on the lower Monongahela River. But there are concerns that what has evolved into a “piecemeal” approach to the badly needed work doesn’t serve the entire locks and dams system well.
That said, others say the approach ensures that respective projects do, in fact, get done – instead of diluting appropriations and fixing only part of many locks and dams.
And as a variety of media outlets have reported it, users – water transport companies that pay a handsome amount (through fuel taxes) into a trust fund designed to underwrite a portion of repairs – would like to see the fund (now loaded with nearly $70 million) more fully utilized to generate matching dollars.
All this said, Port of Pittsburgh officials say they expect the lower Mon locks and dams’ system work to be completed by 2023. That’s great news. But much work remains elsewhere to make sure this vital commerce link does not falter.
The nation cannot afford such a commerce disaster.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
