🚀 go-pugleaf

J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> writes:
> They are built and paid for by the states in which they are located.
> The only control the Federal government has over them is that the Feds
> can withhold a payment if they are not constructed and maintained to a
> certain standard.  Essentially the states are bribed to cooperate.

when they were extending I93 in massachusetts to Tobin bridge in Bostin
... they eventually realized that multilane route one coming into Tobin
bridge from the north/left used all lanes on the Tobin bridge and much
of the traffic exited to the south/right at the other end of Tobin
bridge. The I93 connection would add as many lanes coming in from the
south/right and continue north/left at the end of the bridge
... creating two multilane lane traffic patterns that forming bumper
car X-cross pattern over the length of the bridge.

The result would be that I93 (and route one) traffic would have to be
reduced to something like 15miles/hr several miles before Tobin
... which wouldn't meet federal government interstate standards. So they
considered canceling the project ... because in theory they wouldn't get
the 90% interstate federal reimbursement however, the contractor
canceltation penalty was much greater than 10% they would be on the hook
for completing the bridge.

They apparently got a bill through congress that they could get their
90% reimbursement for the completed project even though the whole
section failed to meet interstate standards.

Something worse later happened with the "big dig" through downtown
boston ... was suppose to be $2B ... but graft and corruption drove it
to $20B. The long time senator from Massachusetts is claimed to have
said that the federal government "owed" the extra $18B to the citizens
of massachusetts (obfiscating the fact the extra $18B only went to a
small number of very wealthy people).

When I first moved to the IBM Cambridge Science Center, massachucetts
politics was explained to me that in most places, known association
with organized crime would adversely affect their chances of election,
while in massachucetts, it significantly helped chances of election.