MONTRAN Transportation Spending Logic
I guess anything can make a good reason to improve the transportation infrastructure in Western Texas:
"We're creating a four-lane divided highway linkage of the four major metropolitan areas in West Texas -- Amarillo, Lubbock and Midland-Odessa. It will also help with University Interscholastic League competitions and college kids going back and forth. It just makes sense."
Uhhhhh....right. I don't think the 349 reliever route is going to make the trip to Amarillo any shorter, or easier on the pocketbooks of our local school districts.
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8 Comments
The logic of all this will become clear once you realize that the UIL is putting Midland in the same district as Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, for football in 2010.
I totally disagree with this sentiment. Linkages are a huge part of community development and economics. Thank God I-20 ended up coming through Midland and Odessa, and that we weren't bypassed.
It does make the trip to Amarillo shorter, because drivers can sustain higher levels of speed with greater ease.
Ask any truck driver (or anyone else who drives long distances regularly) and they will tell you that 4-lane driving is highly preferable.
This "anti 4-lane" stuff is just silly extremism.
*Hook* Seems I got a live one.
It isn't that the transportation linkages aren't a huge part of community development and economics. I know that Midland wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the Railroad, and I welcome most of these transporation improvements proposed by MOTRAN.
However, when the head of the regional transportation alliance starts selling the merits of a highway project on helping with UIL competion and kids going back to college...he has passed into irrational used car salesman like booster-ism.
It's like selling a Convention Center on the room nights of the Antioch Christian Fellowship.
Is any of this money going to fix that crappy Lamesa cutoff from 349 to U.S. 87 that floods anytime it sprinkles? Getting through there is the biggest slowdown on the road between Midland and Amarillo.
People die on highways all the time. Driving is a very dangerous form of transport. But, kids die on that highway north of Midland all the time, driving to and from Tech. I think a lot of parents in West Texas would feel better if they knew it was 4 lane all the way, not because it would eliminate the risk, but because it might mitigate the risk a little.
This pol is probably bringing up UIL because it's a dimwitted way of scoring some political points with what he obviously thinks is a dumb electorate concerned only with sports.
But that doesn't mean "don't build the highway".
If you have some kind of secular reason for being against the project, fine. But this guy's stupid boilerplate comments are just his own fault.
I'm still trying to find where I said I was against the project....
Right, and my name is William Jefferson Clinton.
You know what they say when " It's for the children ... "