Bridge to Nowhere

The Bridge to Nowhere

Every commentator on current events who mentions “the bridge to nowhere” seems to consider it a term of derision, an example of folly and an example of a boondoggle: a useless project aimed at spending other people’s money on something to benefit your supporters.

Actually this is all wrong. The fact is that any new building project replaces existing unused space with something that one hopes will be useful in the future. For example, suppose you decide to build an apartment house on a vacant lot. Before it is built, nobody lives on that lot. Would it make sense to call this “housing for nobody” because no person now lives there?

Consider a factory built to be able to manufacture a new product. Before it was built nothing was manufactured on that space. Does that make the proposed factory “ a building for nothing” since nothing is made there now? since the product to be made in it is new would it be a “factory for building nothing”?

Consider building a new road on a new route (like our interstate highways were built not that long ago). Should they have been considered roads for no one since nobody ever drove through the woods and fields that their routes replaced?

In all cases, building projects, road projects, bridge projects and whatever are designed to handle the needs and desires of the future, not those of the past or present. So the famous bridge to nowhere, which was proposed to link a town in Alaska to an (almost) uninhabited island should be judged that way. That town sits on a fjord with a barely populated island off its shore (described as nowhere because it has essentially no present use) should be judged as a project not by the present use of the island, but by its future value to the town if the bridge is built.

If the town is overcrowded, has pressure for expanded population, and its location prevents expansion on the land side, this bridge might open up a natural solution to that problem. (There are others, such as building bigger structures on the mainland which can compete with it, so it may not be the best solution.) But the value of the project depends on assessment of the future use of the bridge once built, and the future population and development of the island which would be made possible by construction of the bridge.

Only a fool judges the value of a building project by the use of the space involved before the project was built.

These facts do not imply that the project is a valuable one, worth pursuing. Assessing its value depends on our making future projections, which like all future predictions are far from certainties. And I have more faith in proposed building projects in which private entities risk their own money than in those proposed for public financing which we pay for.

The interstate highway system is, in general, an extremely valuable resource and well worth its public financing.

On the other hand, there are many government financed or subsidized projects that have turned out to be disasters. For example, when I was young, pundits blamed slum conditions on rapacious slumlords. The government tore down the slums, and replaced them with expertly designed “projects” of housing for the poor. (No housing there existed just before these were built so they were housing for nobody, but poor people had lived there before, so that depending what your base time is, you might disagree with that designation.) Most of these have turned out to be worse as housing than the slums they replaced, and many have been torn down.

In my town a large high school costing tens of millions of dollars was built thirty or forty years ago but was recently replaced by another (a school for nobody until the old one was torn down) that cost hundreds of millions, because of the failings of the old one. Private housing here seems to last several times longer than that old school did.

There are some significant problems about the “bridge to nowhere” project that are hard to handle. Federal financing for the bridge means we all would pay for it. But its benefits would accrue to only a small fraction of us, namely the future inhabitants of that town. And among these, there is an even smaller set of beneficiaries who would gain the most, namely the owners of property on that island.

It is perfectly natural for each of these groups of people to plan such a bridge and to advocate its construction and support for it and to lobby for same. However it is not right if the Congressmen or state legislators who vote on subsidies for such a venture either are relatives of those who own property on the island, or received campaign contributions from these groups and at the same time produce bills for public financing of this building project. That is corruption and evidence for it would make it improper to proceed with the project.

It would be far better to finance the project somehow based on future tax revenues on developments on the island, and on a toll on the bridge rather than as a gift from the whole country to the town. If money could be raised today based on projections on what could be taken in by such revenues in the future sufficient to finance it, though it is a bridge to nowhere, it would obviously be a worthwhile project.