POINT: Utah’s Legacy Highway — Cruel shrine of concrete
Besides the Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein also left us with the deceptively simple observation that insanity may be recognized in those who persist in applying the same solution repeatedly, while expecting a different result.
Unfortunately, Utah’s public works agencies are trapped in a self-reinforcing cycle of boondoggle projects that consume ever-increasing quantities of Utah tax dollars and our precious natural resources, while worsening the problems they were to solve. This certifiable insanity culminated in the cruelly and paradoxically named Legacy Highway.
This project, conceived as a self-celebratory shrine of asphalt and concrete to Gov. Mike Leavitt, would run through the better part of the Wasatch Front, tearing through over 100 acres of North America’s most biologically precious and rich wetlands in Davis County. Developers are already salivating at the prospect of wiping out the remainder of the area’s natural resources through massive commercial and residential development along this new economic magnet.
Meanwhile, Davis County officials bombard us with horror stories of possible shut-downs along I-15, medical emergencies during traffic jams, and other assorted scenarios that demand another north-south corridor through their jurisdiction. The obvious tax revenues from all the Wal-Marts, Kmarts, PetsMarts, and Super-Plastic-Disposable-Crap-Marts to follow, is said by the Davis County officials, with a remarkably straight face, to be only peripheral to their thinking.
The federal government spends over $30 billion annually on new highway construction, about six times as much as on public transit. (Amtrak continues to struggle on less than $1 billion annually). Yet Americans spend, on average, 443 hours per year stuck in traffic, and transportation remains the second-largest household cost, more than food, education, or health care.
Apologists for the highway argue that, by speeding traffic along, the new highway will actually improve air quality. This argument is also blissfully ignorant of reality. Nationally, cities with higher per capita highway spending actually have higher per capita emissions of smog-forming compounds. The mathematical correlation is undeniable (though I predict my opposing columnist will).
New highways are usually a driving force behind new development and traffic pressure. The libertarian ideology, holding that individual choice should drive transportation decisions, falls apart. Government planning choices have always fueled private economic decisions, and always will – in transportation, real estate, financial markets, energy, utilities, and every other area of public-private interaction. There has never been any such thing as a free market, nor have conservatives ever advocated one. (A truly libertarian philosophy would get government out of transportation altogether, a choice many environmentalists would be quite happy with in this case.)
Nor can the sprawling development that fuels traffic gridlock be attributed simply to population growth, and defended on that basis, and by corollary, opposing sprawl development does not mean opposing population growth. Indeed, many eastern cities such as Cleveland and Detroit have actually lost population, while their developed land area increased, as did their traffic congestion and road construction.
Legacy Highway would only worsen our transportation problems. For all the teeth-gnashing, chest-pounding, and jokes about wetlands from ecologically illiterate Davis County officials, the Denver Court of Appeals was correct in ruling Legacy Highway blatantly illegal.
We now have an opportunity to start over, with transportation alternatives such as light rail, commuter rail, long-distance buses, and more dense, clustered development that saves land, tax dollars, and air quality. The consequences of our decisions about population growth must be discussed.
We can make smarter choices about how to grow. Einstein observed repeated failure as a sign of insanity, but we’ve only got one Wasatch Front to inhabit. Let’s not fail again.
Jim Steitz is a senior majoring in environmental studies. Comments can be sent to him at sl8mh@cc.usu.edu.