Having spent the last week in "Paradise" (more on that in a future post) I'm now back firmly in the lower 48 and, after catching up on the falsehoods, broken promises and outright lies surrounding Obamacare, thought it would be nice to take a look at government dysfunction on a smaller scale.
On a cab ride from Charlotte Amalie to Red Hook our cab driver Java Johnson (no, I'm not making that up) took us along the back roads and gave us quite an interesting history tour of St. Thomas at no extra charge. One of the best stories he told us was about the locally famous Bridge to Nowhere.
It seems that, back in the 90's, the government of St. Thomas received a bunch of cash from the U.S. Federal Government for flood control projects. There was an area outside of Red Hook that had some flooding problems which experts determined could be solved by moving the existing road approximately 500 feet, to a point where it crossed a creek. This, of course, necessitated the building of a bridge, and the seizing (through eminent domain) of several private residences and businesses.
At a cost of $1.5 Million the bridge was completed in 1997. It is a fine bridge, made of concrete and steel it's not a pretty thing, but (without maintenance) it still looks to be operable in 2013, IF you could drive onto it with a car. And that's the problem, you can't. Because after the bridge was built the remaining phases of the program stalled. The eminent domain seizures took longer than anticipated, the environmentalists started griping about gas contamination should the road be moved (one of the seized properties was a gas station with underground tanks) and the recession hit which dried up government funding. In short, the road was never constructed to tie into the bridge.
Fast forward to today and the bridge has become a source of comedy for the local population. As Java said to us "Many people got rich off making this very fine bridge to nowhere, and that's government in St. Thomas." As we got out of the cab at Red Hook I thanked Java for the cab ride, gave him a tip for the history lesson, and told him that, unfortunately, what we saw with the Bridge to Nowhere was pretty much government everywhere today.
In Houston (in case you're wondering) we have our own expensive boondoggle that made several connected interests wealthy, it's called MetroRail and in his recent State of Metro speech Metro board Chairman Gilbert Garcia admitted "It really doesn't go anywhere", forwarding my theory that, despite its size, Houston government operates much like one in a small town.
