Indistinguishable From Magic

Charlie Quimby thinks he caught Chad the Elder in a flub, and accordingly does an endzone happy dance:

Chad the Elder — who kindly nominated this blog for Mitch Berg’s Unintentionally Funniest Leftyblog Contest [note to self – Doh!  I knew I’d flaked on something this week] — loves the toll road connecting Denver with Denver International Airport. He praises the E-470’s “wide-open, hassle free ride” and friendly attendants:

I have to believe that these attendants are not state employees and if that is the case, they–and the E-470–make a powerful argument for further privatization of our highways and byways.

Chad is right about the road, but he confuses efficient service with privatization.

We’ll allow Charlie his happy dance.  It’s not gonna last long.  

The E-470 was built and is run by a public authority composed of the municipalities bordering the road; the authority’s transportation role is similar to Minnesota’s Met Council’s. It not only charges a toll; operations are partly financed by vehicle registration fees.

If that doesn’t burst his bubble, the highway has been designed to allow for the addition of multi-use paths and, in the median, future mass transit.

OK.  That’s enough. 

The E-470 is indeed an interesting road, one I’ve driven many times (when I worked for a company that flew me back and forth to Denver a zillion times).  It shows that government, given boundless resources and an  open-ended mandate (especially as a small part of a larger money-pit boondoggle, the Denver International Airport project), can occasionally duplicate the benefits of private-sector service, market-orientation and usability. 

They say “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.  I suppose the corollary might be “government transportation projects that work well are indistinguishable from private sector operations, to Minnesotans”.

Chad may have been unfamiliar with it because, naturally, a project like the E-470 is something Minnesota wouldn’t touch with a 500-foot surveyor’s tape.  Minnesota’s left-of-center dominant class wouldn’t dream of financing capital projects with user fees, preferring instead the “we’re all in it together/happy to pay for a better Minnesota” madness that’s gotten us to where we’re at now.   They don’t want toll roads, to say nothing of privatization.  When Minnesota embarked on a tiny, tentative experiment with tolls – opening the hidously-expensive, grossly-underused I394 “Sane Lane” carpool and bus lane to toll-paying drivers – the nattering classes reacted as if Tim Pawlenty had ordered the Young Republicans to machine-gun a food shelf. 

Here, we don’t “have to believe” anything. We may be funny, but we’re factual.

SMART-ASS ANSWER:  Tell it to Jeff

NORMAL ANSWER:  Then let’s start building tollways!

2 thoughts on “Indistinguishable From Magic

  1. D’oh! Where are my gatekeepers?

    The difference between the public transit authority that runs the E-470 and the Met Council is that the one is Colorado actually builds ROADS. The E-470 shows that government CAN do the right thing not that it will.

    I now look forward to Charlie joining the call for public tollways here in Minnesota.

    And I still stand by my assertion that the toll attendants were too nice to be state employees.

  2. Chad: It’s okay. We all make mistakes, but just consider the possibility public employees can be nice. I’ve got nothing against tollways. If they reduce congestion, don’t hurt public access and pay for themselves at least as much as public transit, you can put me down in favor.

    Mitch: I was using the royal we, not the collective one. The E-470 Authority didn’t start with an open-ended mandate; it sought one, since there was no authority under existing law. And someday, you could ride your bike to DIA and maybe park it.

    All: Note, driving on a road doesn’t mean you know how it got there or how it operates.

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