On Fri, 26 Mar 2021 10:39:11 -0400, Frank "frank wrote:

On 3/26/2021 9:55 AM, rbowman wrote:
On 03/26/2021 03:51 AM, wrote:
On Thursday, March 25, 2021 at 11:15:23 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:46:18 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Thursday, March 25, 2021 at 3:40:22 PM UTC-4, wrote:

Reagan may have been the last president I supported most of the time
but he screwed up a lot too. Where is Eisenhower when we need him?

In Heaven, pursuing dangerously liberal ideas, like the interstate
highway
system, desegregation, and Earl Warren.

Cindy Hamilton
The difference was when Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway
system he put into place a user fee (gasoline tax) to pay for it.
Since then some democrats have seen fit to raid that tax base to build
railroads to nowhere and subsidize public transportation systems that
paid their own way, even making a modest profit in his time.
Those are also the places with crumbling roads and falling down
bridges. Imagine that.

It's always easier to raise money for sexy projects like new freeways
or bridges than to raise money for boring stuff like maintenance.

Cindy Hamilton


When the New York State Thruway was being constructed, it was only going
to be a toll road until the construction costs were paid off. Yeah, sure.


I worked a couple of summers as a toll collector on the Delaware
Memorial bridge. They actually dropped the toll from 75 cents to 50
cents because the bond was being paid off. Now they have a twin bridge
and one way toll is $5 matching bridges in PA. You pay one way and go
free coming back. Before they made me a toll collector I worked summers
on the ground crew and there were a lot of maintenance costs. I recall
a rigger on the original construction crew that on Friday afternoon
would have a half pint of whiskey for lunch then climb the towers with
the biggest wrench I had ever seen to tighten bolts. We also lost a
couple of painters one summer when I was there who fell when scaffolding
failed.

Speaking of the Autobahn, I was only on it once on a bus tour in Europe
and it was so crowded you'd be lucky to go 40 mph.

People don't think about it but tolls are big business. They had some
scammers on the east coast who hijacked one "Express Lane" on the
Florida turnpike over on the Miami coast and they stole an estimated
$100,000 before they got caught ... in quarters.
It went on for years tho.
They left the gate up and you just threw your quarter in the bin as
you went through. Most did pay and it was a lot faster so more people
used it. The chute just went into a drywall bucket inside. Most of the
crew, including the supervisors were in on it and it took years to
catch them. The toll authority never missed the money. It was a
whistle blower who wasn't happy with his take.
This never made the paper. I heard it from the engineer from DOT when
we were building the MM99 toll plaza. The people got fired and had to
pay back some money but nothing near what they stole. Nobody was
prosecuted as far as I know. They did put cameras in every booth after
that.