LETTER: The transportation bureaucracy

Usually I dread reading articles by Road Warrior Mick Akers because they foretell of the Nevada Department of Transportation disrupting traffic on one of our Clark County roads in the guise of “improving” traffic flow. His Monday column on plans for improving the Charleston corridor was quite different and informative. In two sentences it explains why the United States lags so far behind the rest of the world in providing good public transportation.

Firstly: The U.S. Department of Transportation grant to study the alternatives to improving public transit on Charleston means we will spend $5.9 million of before Charleston ever sees an orange cone. Wow.

Then comes the environmental study: three to five years to do a study in a dense urban area. The cost? Who knows.

No matter if the recommendation is high-speed or light rail, buses or something else, countries with GDPs below ours seem to be able to build these projects at less cost, in shorter times and without “gold-plating” everything. Perhaps their bureaucrats are more motivated to get the job done rather than just protecting their own little fiefdom with regulations.