Charlie Quimby thinks he caught Chad the Elder in a flub, and accordingly does an endzone happy dance:<\/p>\n
\nChad the Elder \u2014 who kindly nominated this blog for Mitch Berg’s Unintentionally Funniest Leftyblog Contest<\/a> [note to self – Doh!\u00a0 I knew <\/em>I’d flaked on something this week] \u2014 loves the toll road<\/a> connecting Denver with Denver International Airport. He praises the E-470’s “wide-open, hassle free ride” and friendly attendants:<\/p>\nI 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Chad is right about the road, but he confuses efficient service with privatization.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
We’ll allow Charlie his happy dance.\u00a0 It’s not gonna last long. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\nThe 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
OK.\u00a0 That’s enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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).\u00a0 It shows that government, given boundless resources and an\u00a0 open-ended mandate (especially as a small part of a larger money-pit boondoggle, the Denver International Airport project), can <\/em>occasionally duplicate the benefits of private-sector service, market-orientation and usability.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They say “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.\u00a0 I suppose the corollary might be “government transportation projects that work well are indistinguishable from private sector operations, to Minnesotans”.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Minnesota’s left-of-center dominant class wouldn’t dream<\/em> 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.\u00a0\u00a0 They don’t want <\/em>toll roads, to say nothing of privatization.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nHere, we don’t “have to believe” anything. We may be funny, but we’re factual.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n