Todays' News Journal Editorial by Charlie Weymouth points out a major reason why so many in Delaware are increasingly stuck in traffic, and will soon be bailing out the State's Transportation Trust Fund.
For years, WILMAPCO and other have tried to use a technically sound prioritization system to rank transportation investment based on there technical merits and needs; but special interests and "political accommodation" continue to be the rule!!!
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Don't lose perspective in NKS road deal with DelDOT
Lest we lose our perspective by focusing upon the specific NKS-Tigani-U.S. 1 accommodation in a “sweetheart” deal, one should be reminded of that long held Delaware travesty,
not only of DelDOT real estate misdealing, but one of garbaging up most of our major interstate and intrastate thoroughfares with directly accessible commercialism, such defiant of the original purpose of the road.
While some still weep at the justification of specific routing for Relief Route 1, political accommodation crassly proceeds forth on the three-mile diversion of the major North-South interstate (U.S. 301) to accommodate two housing projects. But one more example is the near completion of the Coastal Emergency Relief route via the new Indian River Inlet Bridge.
Philosophically, this latter could be paralleled to leaving one’s child alone in the bathtub to learn how to swim. The continuing pathos is that proper relief routings, enhancement of the essential routes to improve commerce and trade, have each been long designated, the design standards well-established to protect these interstate links.
Instead, local political accommodation, reaching down to the individual resident landowner, has remained the quiet priority.
Our priorities are amuck, and fortunately, with foreign credit tightening, parochial want could soon be abbreviated.
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