Almost once a week, I read an article about Michigan's road woes. Either the article will complain about road quality, construction delays, poor salting/plowing, cost of gas, the lack of maintenance funds, etc. Yet, nobody seems able to identify the actual problem. In today's DetNews, we have an article about a potential rise in Michigan's gas tax because it is not sufficient at $.19/gallon to maintain our current infrastructure. Okay, fine. You've identified the fiscal problem. However, the author totally misses the boat in terms of identifying solutions. The only solution proposed is "a gradual increase in Michigan's 19-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax, the main source of state road money." Even worse, if you read through the comments to the article, the only thing posters can come up with is either [[a) the construction of the roads is lousy, so there must be problem with the contractors or the materials being used, or [[b) the gas taxes are being siphoned off for other purposes. Now, I don't proclaim to know much about civil engineering or road construction, but I can tell you that the gas taxes go primarily to roads, and sometimes money in the general fund even gets diverted from other projects to roads. Doesn't anyone see the real problem here?! We've built too many roads and they too expensive to maintain.

Another recent article discussed three small road projects happening around the Metro. Each project will cost the state in excess of $10 million dollars. That $30+ million right there down the drain assuming there are no cost overruns. At the end of the day, you will have nothing to show for that money other than smoother blacktop. To me, that sounds ludicrous. Michigan spends billions, literally, billions building and maintaining roads. Why? More roads do not benefit anyone other than a few contractors and suburban developers. It is the subsidy of subsidies, and the infrastructure has little to no marginal benefit at this point. Yet, nobody gawks at the enormous road budget figures, nobody realizes that what we're doing is not sustainable, nobody points out that this money could be better spent on other things. Hell, the article suggests that money might be taken from education funding to pay for more roads. That's. Just. Great.

I say, if you are one of the Archie Bunkers out there in Metro Detroit [[and you know who you are), and you're going to complain about money being spent on other infrastructure, institutions, or on education, you need to make that same scowling face when the government should be reining in road spending. Road spending is out of control and people need to see the forest through the trees. The author of the article suggests that we need better roads to attract businesses and residents to the region. Hogwash. Roads are not a solution, they are an ever growing problem.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20110...es-need-reform