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Tempe should take a pass on bridge funds
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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is now well-known for having once supported what has been called the "bridge to nowhere," a $400 million proposal for a structure that, if Congress had funded it, would have given about 50 Alaskans on one island road access to a more populated one that is currently reached by a short ferry ride.
In the face of this, Tempe city officials might be persuaded to do, regarding a bridge of their own, a similar about-face to the one the Republican vice-presidential nominee did.
Since becoming governor, Palin has been against the Ketchikan bridge, now a poster child for federal pork-barrel spending. And a proposed $5.7 million pedestrian bridge across Tempe Town Lake has the same scent of the other white meat.
As the Tribune's Mike Branom reported Sept. 7, Tempe plans to pay only about $1.55 million of the Town Lake bridge's cost, the balance coming from federal highway funds that also go to build and repair bridges. Like its Alaskan counterpart, the sweeping-designed bridge would stretch 1,000 feet from the Tempe Center for the Arts on the lake's south bank to, well, there's nothing really there on the north bank.
Even more federal dollars may be available, Branom reported, if Tempe succeeds in an application for a grant through something called the Innovative Bridge Research and Deployment Program, overseen by the Federal Highway Administration.
Setting aside the fact that pedestrians and bicyclists already can travel on two existing bridges carrying Mill Avenue over the lake a few hundred yards to the east, what we know of federal funds for bridges is that they should be spent to cover costs for the many hundreds of road, highway and rail bridges across the country recently identified as in serious need of repair.
Anything left for new bridges should go to those people who would actually use to get somewhere.
If Tempe wants to build an eye-catching "bridge to nowhere" across Town Lake, it should come up with all of the money itself.
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