Links to press coverage of this study.
(Click here to
see coverage of Enright's earlier
Memphis to Indianapolis GIS study.)
We had here a link to access video of WTIU news coverage of the press
event . It is no longer active, but they provided great coverage
of our announcement.
<http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/2/056847-2152-009.html>
also published at The IndyChannel.com <http://www.theindychannel.com/news/2322044/detail.html>
Associated Press
July 10, 2003
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The proposed route of I-69 from Canada to Mexico
actually will take motorists longer to drive, according to a study
by a
former Monroe County official and member of a group that opposes the
highway.
Kevin Enright, who was county surveyor from 1996 to 2000, said he spent
nine months analyzing the proposed route of I-69 from Port Huron, Mich.,
to Laredo, Texas. He concluded it would be an average of 84 miles longer
than existing interstates.
Enright, who presented his study Tuesday, said he used mapping software
to lay out the proposed routes in each state and overlay them on maps
of
existing roads.
The 84-mile difference is the median between the longest and shortest
possible routes proposed, Enright said.
"They're not creating a new super-efficient transportation route," said
Enright, a member of Count Us! -- which opposes the I-69 plan. "They're
duplicating an already existing route and doing so less efficiently."
Bryan Nicol, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Transportation,
said the selected corridor through southwestern Indiana was the best
route.
"This direct route meets the purpose and need for our project and was
the
product of one of the most comprehensive studies ever undertaken by
Indiana," he said.
Study: I-69 route not the shortest distance between
two points
<http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2003/07/09/news.0709-HT-A1_JLR09663.sto.>
By Bethany Swaby
Herald-Times Staff Writer
If you look at the big picture, the proposed route of Interstate 69 from
Michigan to Texas will actually lengthen motorists' drive time.
That's according to a study released Tuesday by a former Monroe County
official and the anti-highway group COUNT US!
Kevin Enright, who served as county surveyor from 1996 to 2000, said
he spent nine months completing his analysis that shows the proposed route
of I-69 from Port Huron, Mich., to Laredo, Texas, would be an average of
84
miles longer than it is for motorists using existing interstates.
Enright said he arrived at his conclusions by overlaying federal maps
of the road's proposed route through several states onto a map of existing
roads.
He said he used the Internet to download maps of the proposed pathway
from each state's highway department, and used the same mapping
software as the federal highway administration to lay out the paths on
his
overlay map.
Since proposed routes for the interstate through other states varies,
Enright said the 84 miles is the median route between the longest and
shortest possible ones.
The shortest possible proposed route is 46 miles longer, while the longest
possible proposed route is 160 miles longer, the study said.
"They're not creating a new super efficient transportation route," Enright
said. "They're duplicating an already existing route and doing so less
efficiently."
He presented the results of the study to about 20 people Tuesday at a
brief press conference in the auditorium of the Monroe County Public
Library.
Tom Tokarski with Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads and John Smith
with COUNT US! also spoke.
"This information really cuts deep into the body of the entire project,"
Tokarski said. "If I was a trucker going from Canada to Mexico, I certainly
wouldn't travel 84 miles longer."
Smith agreed, saying that if the route is going to be longer, supporters
shouldn't praise the overall time-saving aspect of the project.
But highway supporters say the study's findings show that foes of the
project have tunnel vision.
Matt Meadors, with the pro-highway group Voices for I-69, said the
overall project must be taken in context.
"They're focusing on one piece of information," he said. "You have to
look at all the desired outcomes as identified by Congress and the individual
states."
For most states, Indiana among them, that includes hopes that the new
road will bring economic development opportunities, he said.
The study's release also drew a prepared comment from Indiana
Department of Transportation commissioner J. Bryan Nicol.
"Indiana has announced the selection of a preferred corridor for I-69 that
is the best route for our state," he said. "This direct route meets the
purpose and need for our project and was the product of one of the most
comprehensive studies ever undertaken by Indiana. We are diligently
working to complete the final report and move the development of I-69 into
final alignment work for this important corridor."
***************************
Editorial, The Bloomington Hoosier Times July12, 2003
http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2003/07/12/digitalcity.0712-HT-A8_LFS19664.sto
Have I-69 foes gone too far?
Highway length argument exercise in obfuscating real issue for Indiana
Opponents of the "new terrain" route for I-69 across southwest Indiana,
it appears, are increasingly willing to trumpet any argument, no matter
how
inane, that they can scrape up against the highway.
The most recent came Tuesday, when former Monroe County Surveyor Kevin
Enright presented some findings from his research on the project to
about 20 highway opponents at a meeting.
Enright argued the I-69 project is unnecessary because the current Interstate
highway system will get you from Port Huron, Mich., to Laredo, Texas,
in 84 miles less than the projected route for the fully-completed I-69.
He arrived at that average figure after computing mileages for various
I-69 options on the drawing boards in various states. He said the shortest
possible proposed route is 46 miles longer, while the longest is 160
miles longer. "They're not creating a new super-efficient transportation
route," he
said. "They're duplicating an already existing route and doing so less
efficiently."
Longtime I-69 foe Tom Tokarski of Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads
declared in response that "This information really cuts deep into the body
of the entire project," because "If I was a trucker going from Canada
to Mexico, I certainly wouldn't travel 84 miles longer."
We won't even bother to question the accuracy of Enright's estimates
of possible I-69 lengths at such an early stage of its routing process.
Nor will
we quibble with Tokarski's view that a trucker wouldn't choose to add
84 miles to an already 1,800-plus-mile drive between Port Huron and Laredo.
But the tenor of their argument is that since the I-69 route would increase
the drive from Ontario to Mexico by an hour and 15 minutes, the entire
project is invalid.
That argument is myopic.
First, let's apply their own argument to a linchpin of their case. Many
area I-69 opponents do purport to back what they have named "The Common
Sense I-70/U.S. 41 Route" from Indianapolis to Evansville. But that
would make the overall length of I-69 about a dozen miles longer than the
new-terrain route via Bloomington. Which just contributes more to making
a route that would sink nearly $1 billion on existing four-lane highways
and wouldn't serve a single new community "The Uncommonly Senseless
I-70/U.S. 41 Route." If driving distance is such a critical issue, we now
fully expect them to drop that idea.
But far beyond that, the mindset here is that the only purpose of I-69
is to race semis from Lake Huron to the Rio Grande. But how about
dramatically improving community-to-community transit within the states
it crosses, such as between Evansville and Bloomington? How about giving
dying towns in declining rural regions currently unserved by an interstate
-- or even any modern four-lane highway -- an economic boost? None of
that matters?
If local I-69 opponents want to say they don't want to lose trees and
their or other folks' homes and farms to a highway, that's legitimate,
and they
should say it. But arguing the project is fatally flawed because its
overall length won't be shorter than the current driving distance from
Port Huron to
Laredo is an exercise in irrelevance for Hoosiers.
***************************
from The Bloomington Alternative <http://www.bloomingtonalternative.com>
http://www.bloomingtonalternative.com/subscribers/news.php?topicid=305
CIVITAS: Then they attack
July 13, 2003
by Gregory Travis
We never know, from week to week, whether it's going to be
feast or famine at CIVITAS. Because we write almost
exclusively on events relating to local civic life, we're
constantly at risk of having nothing of consequence on which
to comment in a particular week. We're happy to report that
this week wasn't one of those weeks.
This week, the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce's list of
candidate non-sequiturs, the embarrassingly ill-argued
Herald-Times guest editorial denouncing a "living wage,"
and today's HT gem "Have I-69 foes gone too far?"all
conspired to create an environment so target-rich that we
almost didn't know which to choose. In the end, we decided
to take on yesterday's delightfully-titled editorial.
Have I-69 foes gone too far?
We immediately stiffened in our chair as we read the title of
the editorial. While we can't imagine a more fiscally-reckless
and myopic project than I-69, we also bristle at potentially
counterproductive actions by the opponents of the highway.
Were we about to read of an act of eco-terrorism? Had
someone thrown a pie at Governor O'Bannon or perhaps
toilet-papered Vi-69 Simpson's home?
No. What had the HT's editorial pants in a bunch was former
Monroe County surveyor Kevin Enright's imperious release
showing that, on a national scale, I-69 is completely
redundant.
We realized that the editorial's title was a bit of Midwestern
wordplay but nevertheless, it and the article's tone, conveyed
a sense of vehemence not deserved by Mr. Enright's simple
observation. Why so nasty then?
Apparently, it is one thing if idealistic and well-meaning
people want to protest the environmental consequences of a
highway. That's non-threatening. After all, this is Indiana
where we think pavement is progress and environmental
protests have never been taken seriously.
But concrete demonstrations of the highway's broken
costs/benefits, transportation lunacy, and ultimate irrelevancy
are out. Showing that the highway would not only end up
paralleling existing interstates from Indianapolis to Laredo
(as the HT's own front-page map showed last Wednesday)
but that it would actually be longer than those existing
interstates wasn't just unfair, it was actually going too far.
First they ignore you, then they make fun of you, then they
attack you, then you win
The road's proponents have always scattered, with hands
waving like cockroach antennae, whenever the blue light of
reason and responsibility sweeps beneath the highway
lobby's carpet. It's certainly no different with this latest
outburst except for a discernible change in the timbre. Again,
it is delicious that the highway proponents characterize the
publication of well-reasoned and irrefutable facts, albeit facts
contrary to their beliefs, as "going too far."
To be sure, it's a little cruel to fault them for being angry. After
all, the proponent's stated reasons for the highway have
changed so often that they must be dizzy-sick from the spin.
Remember when, back in the early 1990s, the highway was
going to be our ticket to a bright NAFTA-illuminated future?
Remember when its supporters called it the "NAFTA
super-highway?" These days though, with Indiana leading
the nation in both existing interstate miles and NAFTA
job-loss, it's no longer politically correct to link the highway to
the trade agreement. God forbid that the public realize that the
same self-interests that sold them NAFTA almost a decade
ago are now trying to sell them another highway using the
same vague and flimsy pretenses.
And it stings even more when people like Mr. Enright show
that not only does the nation already possess a NAFTA
interstate between Indianapolis and Laredo (over which one
hundred thousand Hoosier jobs have drained south since
1994), but that existing interstates are nearly a hundred miles
shorter than the planned I-69-between the same two
endpoints!
Ok, forget what we said about NAFTA, it's about, uhh,
something else
As the editorial scolded, the highway isn't about NAFTA any
more. In a statement that beautifully illustrates the confusion
under which the highway proponents labor, the HT now says
the highway is not about international trade but about
"dramatically improving community-to-community transit
within the states it crosses, such as between Evansville and
Bloomington."
CIVITAS took a road trip from Bloomington to the Evansville
area just last week. We don't remember crossing any state
boundaries. Furthermore, outside of Indiana, the proposed
I-69 almost perfectly parallels existing interstate highways.
How can a redundant road dramatically improve anything?
The editorial's response is that even redundant roads are
talismans of economic prosperity - despite the lack of any
evidence for such within our own state - thus a new-terrain
route through southern Indiana is justified in its own right.
What's the recipe for that right? Take a pinch of intangible but
emotionally manipulative safety platitudes, stir in some
plastic concern for the economically distressed, and bring to
a boil of righteous indignation. Wave hands during a
15-minute simmer and wash any remaining reality out of the
mix with water. Makes: sufficient quantities to keep people
eating, not talking.
Finally, the conservative party starts to act conservatively
The paper believes that it has somehow "outed" anti-highway
factions by exposing an imagined contradiction between their
favoring the US-41/I-70 route (which is twelve miles longer
within Indiana) and their criticizing a new national road. A
road that is roughly one hundred miles longer, from Indy to
Laredo, than existing roads.
Their argument goes that you can't argue for an existing, and
shorter, national route while also arguing for an existing,
albeit longer, statewide route. They also throw out the canard
that only a new-terrain highway can help those people who
live in one of the handful of Indiana counties not now served
by multiple four-lane highways. And they never mention the
most serious and cost-effective alternative proposed by
opponents: no-build.
Of course their argument is bogus. What's inherently less
virtuous about spending money on existing highways, to
improve their function, vs. spending money on new
highways? If the choice is between building an interstate that
not only duplicates existing interstates but is longer than
them vs. no-build, then is there any argument at all?
What connection can there possibly be between locally
advocating that I-69 either not be built, or be built to utilize
existing roads in Indiana, and observing that, nationally, the
road is totally redundant? What's wrong with not serving
those people in counties without interstates, if there are more
people in economic distress in counties with interstates?
After all, there are more people in economic distress from
Terre Haute to Evansville along US-41 than in all of the
new-terrain counties combined.
If his comments during a campaign stop are any indication, it
looks like Republican Gubernatorial candidate Mitch Daniels
is at least starting to play the part of a fiscal conservative. His
remarks in Bloomington yesterday, namely that he is open to
re-considering the highway and/or its route based on
cost/benefit analysis, must greatly stress the highway
boosters.
Perhaps that's the real source of the HT's vehemence?
This column is an excerpt from CIVITAS, a weekly column
written by Gregory Travis that focuses on the economic and
civic dimensions of local issues. It takes its name from a
similar format column written by James Howard Kunstler.
***************************
Mostly regarding the race for Governor of Indiana, this Terre Haute Tribune Star link shows that this study is part of the logic of I-69 in Indiana now.
<http://www.tribstar.com/display/inn_news/columnists/ncol02.txt#>
"Meanwhile, an Indiana University geographer recently published a
study noting that the planned shortcut cum economic boon is 90
miles longer than existing interstate highways from Mexico to
Canada."
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