Where's that Doyle transit plan?

Remember back in July, after Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed a sales tax increase for transit, he promised his own transit funding plan in a couple of weeks?

It's September now.

Where's that plan, governor?

WisDOT budget shortfall? You're KIDDDDING

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is running into a budget shortfall when people are driving less, the country is in a deep recession and the agency is still enamored of magic budgeting. (That's when WisDOT overschedules huge, massively expensive road projects and then collectively closes its eyes and just wishes, wishes real hard that the money to pay for them will somehow just appear.)

The road lobbyists are all pretending that the $49.1 million shortfall signals some fundamental flaw with the state's transportation funding method and that even more money should be picked from taxpayers' pockets and forked over to the road construction firms that will show their gratitude by funneling some of that money into campaign fund accounts or, in as was the case with Gov. Doyle, into his inauguration party fund.

WisIDIOT kannot spel

From the Wausau Herald:

Highway sign for Business Highway 51 in Rothschild, Schofield misspells every word but ‘exit,’ Wisconsin Department of Transportation points to company named Decker

Wausau Daily Herald

A sign pointing southbound travelers onto Business Highway 51 in Rothschild and Schofield bears an incorrect spelling for every word except “exit.”

David Vieth, director of the bureau of highway operations for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, said the mistake was made by Decker Supply Company of Madison, which printed the sign.

The sign for exit 185 on southbound Highway 51 reads “Buisness 51 Rothschield Schofeild.”

“How do I politely say it shows some incompetence on someone’s part?” said Rothschild Village President Neal Torney.

Highway organization funding dwarfs transit

From our friends at streetsblog.com:

The American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials, or AASHTO, is the road lobby's leading voice, reporting more than $53 million in annual revenue on its most recent publicly available Internal Revenue Service (IRS) filing.

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA), which represents local transit agencies as well as companies involved in transit networks, reported $21 million in annual revenue in its most recent IRS filing.

Highways have a better than 2-to1 funding advantage over transit even for their respective national organizations!

Six-lane Zoo Interchange option endorsed by council

It happened quick, without discussion. The Common Council on Tuesday endorsed a six-lane option for the Zoo Interchange reconstruction.

It was over in an instant, 13-2 (I think). More later.

$2.3 billion does not come close to real Zoo Interchange project costs

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation isn't coming anywhere close to the entire truth when it says the Zoo Interchange reconstruction project will cost $2.3 billion.

That is way, way, way too low.

First, it doesn't include interest on bonding. If WisDOT bonds half the project cost (roughly its share of the Marquette Interchange project costs), or $1.15 billion, over 30 years at 7% interest, its interest payments alone will total about $1.6 billion.

Yup, interest paid out of the public pocket on Zoo Interchange bonding could amount to more than twice the base cost of the entire Marquette Interchange reconstruction project.

You can certainly play with the numbers -- a 4% interest rate would mean $835 million in interest payments and a 4% rate with a 20-year payback would mean $532 million in interest payments.

But interest payments are not the only cost WisDOT is conveniently not talking about. The agency's draft environmental impact statement discusses the need to move many, many utility towers that are in the way of the proposed freeway. Some of those costs are included in the $2.3 billion project cost that WisDOT cites, but it is likely that millions and millions and millions in costs related to moving the towers will be incurred by We Energies and American Transmission Co. and, of course, its ratepayers.

WisDOT isn't talking about those costs because they are not state costs. They are, however, our costs, ones we will all be paying through our utility bills. Those costs need to be part of the discussion.

WisDOT has an obligation to the public to talk about the total bill for the Zoo Interchange before design decisions on the project are made.

In which WisDOT shows its demographic ignorance

This shocker just in from the draft environmental impact statement for the proposed Zoo Interchange reconstruction:

"Wauwatosa West and Whitman Elementary Schools have a lower minority percentage than the neighborhoods surrounding the schools."

Minority enrollment at each of those schools is about 30%. Anyone who knows the least bit about western Wauwatosa, where those schools are located, knows that the minority populations in those immediate neighborhoods are nowhere near 30%. (The city as a whole is about 94% white, according to the 2000 census.)

There are not many ways to look at this gross misstatement of fact: either WisDOT knew that its assertion was false, but made it anyway, which is fairly hard to believe; the folks at Madison-based WisDOT are truly that ignorant about Milwaukee demographics; or WisDOT is careless in preparing project documents and readers should be wondering what else it got exactly wrong in this one, the agency's justification for launching a $2 billion plus construction project.