Posted by US Resident, USA - Tuesday, September 01, 2009 at 3:04 p.m.
Roads and bridges are bad all over the country from the brooklyn bridge to the bridges in s.carolina to the roads in california to the covered bridges in vermont and yes here in michigan. If it were just locals wasting money here in michigan it wouldnt be everywhere. Goverment cuts in funding have hit the bottom of the barrel and there is nothing left unaffected. Now people who are used to goverment waste have to tighten their belts as the recession is on. The country is going broke.
Posted by Rocco Johnson, Michigan - Friday, August 28, 2009 at 11:53 a.m.
This state's good times have come and gone; highest unemployment, terrible roads, crooked politicians and a serious budget deficit. Like fools we invested in one industry (auto), and it has eclipsed as well (thanks UAW).
After 150 years of family history here, now we're forced to move south and relocate to where the jobs are. Those southern states have got it right by keeping the unions out and preventing them from ruining their businesses. I never thought the most beautiful state in the union would be uninhabitable.
We should be ashamed for letting Michigan end up like this. It didn’t happen overnight. We were the backbone of the U.S., now we're the trailer park.
Posted by Jason Hafelein, Midland, MI - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 10:20 p.m.
Maybe it is time to Exercise Eminent Domain. Maybe we need to make I-75 into A Toll Road, plus a few sections of US-127, as well as US-23. That would help those roads, and then maybe attention can be shifted to other State Transport issues. Oh, here is an old idea than needs a resurrection: Passenger Trains! We need AmTrack or someone similar to run a line from Bay City through to Mt Pleasant and Ludington. Also a line to run from Ann Arbor up through to Alma and perhaps Traverse City.
If our State or Country is not going to hurry up and invest in our roads and streets, and obviously less than 15% of people are going to be buying electric cars... The next best step to Reduce multiple sources of exhaust is to create just a few. If 700 to 1500 people stopped driving their cars on weekdays, and took a train to work instead, that is a Lot of individual sources of exhaust eliminated. Imagine: 450 people on One train versus all 420+ cars smoking-up the roads.
Hey.. it's a good thought. And, GM and Chrysler could stay in business manufacturing Railroad cars and hardware, too! With the money everyone will save on gas, they can buy more expensive cars for their leisure. It's a Win-Win for the Environment, the Public, and the Economy.
Posted by Acme Pete, TC - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 4:18 p.m.
Where is all our road dollars going ??? Quite simply for state of the art buildings, furniture, computers, equipment etc... Money for roads, sorry we spent it all on our comfy offices....
Posted by David Taylor, Iron Mountain - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 3:07 p.m.
Our local city council in Iron Mountain hasn't paid to have a road repaved in years. Our curbs are becoming an indangered species. Sidewalks are going the way of the dinosaur. Why? The city council gives city jobs to their friends and family, and gives them all nice fat paychecks for jobs that do nothing for the town. We pay sky high taxes and get nothing back. Our government is corrupt, just like a little bananna republic... friends and family of the city council get our tax money and we get nothing.
Posted by Tanya Warren, Traverse City - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 1:11 p.m.
I'm sure that a good chunk of it was wasted when they decided that I-75 ought to replace all of their metal sign posts with wooden posts. Instead of waiting until they NEEDED to be replaced, they just started ripping out the perfectly good metal ones to replace with the wooden ones. And how about all of the guardrails along the state highways that they decided needed to be different heighth? Some new blacktop would be nice.......
Posted by yooper yooper, yooper - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 12:18 p.m.
Would like to know just exactly how long the funding for roads has been squandered and where it was squandered to? Seems like basic replacement and repairs have been neglected for some time now. When and why did road maintenance become such a low priority in Michigan? Just a NON educated guess, but, there must have been some kind of "committee" created to "observe" our roads, which sucked up the road funds. There are way too many cushy office jobs and not enough people to actually get off their duffs and do the hard labor. And why is that?? Because, the hard laborer gets paid a minimal wage and the cushy office job gets paid 3 times as much. That and office jobs are year round where the actual labor part is seasonal. (And..well, it's pretty obvious that whoever designs and approves the changes we do get, have NEVER driven our U.P. roads!)
