the washington state government is full of idiots
US Department of Transportation Names SR 520 Bridge Replacement A Federal Priority
“We welcome the announcement that the USDOT has made the replacement of the SR 520 bridge a national priority and will work with the agency to secure this additional federal funding,” said Paula Hammond, Interim Secretary of Transportation. “The SR 520 bridge is among the most vulnerable structures in our state and needs to be replaced. The features of the federal Urban Partnership program are a good match for the SR 520 bridge because better transit, technology, telecommuting and electronic tolling strategies have already been identified as part of the future of the corridor.”
The grant is timed to coincide with upcoming state legislature decisions on the bridge, ongoing mediation and the development of a finance plan for the bridge replacement. Under terms of the grant, King County would receive up to $41 million to purchase 45 new buses for the corridor and make other transit improvements, and about $86 million would be provided to develop and implement active traffic management and traveler information systems, and to support future decisions by the Washington State Legislature on how best to toll the bridge. In addition, the grant would deliver up to $11.6 million for improvements to Puget Sound ferry service.
Can someone explain to me how $11.6M dollars for the ferries and $41M for buses will enable the replacement of the 520 bridge, before it falls into Lake Washington?
This grant is intended to fund congestion pricing experiments in the US, e.g. NYC mayor Bloomberg’s plan to charge drivers $8 to drive on Manhattan Island below 86th street, or London’s highly successful cordon.
In our case, it enables King County to create a toll on the bridge that can be collected at speeds exceeding 60mph, but only during peak hours of the day.
How this fits into replacing the 520 Bridge? The revenue from the tolling will apply directly to costs to rebuild the bridge.
$86M for, among other things, a “traveler info system?” Hey cool! That’s probably going to be one of those low wattage AM transmitters at 1560 KHz with a difficult to understand automated voice saying, “the 520 bridge has fallen into Lake Washington” over and over and over again.