Congress Spends $130,000 per foot on I-35 Bridge

by on August 5, 2007 · 4 comments

Last week, Congress passed a bill spending $250 million on reconstruction of the I-35 bridge in Minnesota. Over at WashingtonWatch.com, we did some calculating and found that this quarter-billion in spending amounts to about $130,000 per foot.

It’s about a third of the height, but triple the cost-per-foot, of the infamous Bridge to Nowhere.

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About Jim Harper

Jim Harper is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. A Poli Sci major at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Jim served as Editor-in-Chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly in his final year at Hastings College of the Law. Prior to becoming a policy analyst and advocate, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the U.S. House and Senate. He avoids genuine life experience by watching lots and lots of reality TV.

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  • eric

    Beside the actual bridge itself, are there any earmarks in that bill that could account for the excessive appropriation? This is reflexive legislation at its worst, just like the Katrina funding.

  • eric

    Beside the actual bridge itself, are there any earmarks in that bill that could account for the excessive appropriation? This is reflexive legislation at its worst, just like the Katrina funding.

  • http://www2.blogger.com/profile/14380731108416527657 Steve R.

    Regretfully, we don’t have real proactive planning, our actions are now dictated by crisis-of-the-moment media events. The bigger concern here is that our commitment to older crisis-of-the-moment efforts, such as the rehabilitation of New Orleans will begin to fade into oblivion with each new-crisis-of-the-moment.

    Eventually, New Orleans will be flooded again. A new congressional inquiry will find that rehabilitation funds were diverted to other “critical” projects. And the cycle continues to repeat.

  • http://www2.blogger.com/profile/14380731108416527657 Steve R.

    Regretfully, we don’t have real proactive planning, our actions are now dictated by crisis-of-the-moment media events. The bigger concern here is that our commitment to older crisis-of-the-moment efforts, such as the rehabilitation of New Orleans will begin to fade into oblivion with each new-crisis-of-the-moment.

    Eventually, New Orleans will be flooded again. A new congressional inquiry will find that rehabilitation funds were diverted to other “critical” projects. And the cycle continues to repeat.

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