The United States federal government should close the United States Department of Transportation

Federal highway funding is chronically ineffective.

Transportation Projects. Large, some-times massive, cost overruns are common- place in federally funded transportation projects.96 In 1985 government officials claimed that Boston’s “Big Dig” highway project would cost $2.6 billion and be completed by 1998. The cost has bal-looned to $14.6 billion, and the project is still not finished.97In a 1989 referendum, Denver residents agreed to construction of a new $1.7 billion international airport. By the time the airport was opened in 1995, the cost had mushroomed to $4.8 bil-lion.98 In 1994 Virginia officials claimed that the Springfield interchange project would cost $241 million. The cost has now soared to $676 million.99The cost of New York’s Penn Station redevelopment has more than doubled, and the project is years behind schedule.100 Those are not isolated cases of bad man-agement. Such problems are chronic and plague much of the federal government.101 The GAO found that half of the federal high-way projects it examined in recent years had cost overruns of more than 25 percent.102 Large cost overruns are routine on multi-bil-lion-dollar technology upgrade projects at federal agencies.103 For example, the FBI’s $600 million project to update its computer systems finally neared completion in 2004 but is $123 million over budget and 21 months late.104

In a 1950 conference organized by the Bureau of Public Roads, economist Shorey Peterson noted that, “It is in character for the engineer to be mainly concerned, not with broad matters of public interest, but with specific relations between road types and traffic conditions.” Peterson specifically warned against trying to account for the “public interest” when planning roads. “Control of road improvement through judging its relation to the general welfare is as debatable, as devoid of dependable benchmarks as deciding the proper peacetime expenditure for national defense or the right quantity and quality of public education,” said Peterson. “Controlled in this way, highway projects are peculiarly subject to ‘pork barrel’ political grabbing.”30 Federal transportation funding since the passage of ISTEA has proven Peterson correct. Federal transportation earmarks, unheard of before 1980, have exploded from 10 in 1982 to about 500 in 1991 to more than 6,000 in 2005.31 Cities are competing to outdo one 6 another in building the most expensive rail projects. And in a growing number of urban areas, transportation planning seems to be about almost anything but transportation. Congressional authorization for the federal gasoline tax expires every six years, so Congress has reauthorized the tax twice since ISTEA, each time preserving or adding to long-range planning requirements. The next reauthorization is scheduled for 2009, which gives Congress an opportunity to revisit this process.