So, the bridge is out on Northbound I-65 over the Wildcat in Tippecanoe County. According to the INDOT press release:
Structural engineers monitoring the I-65 northbound bridge over the Wildcat Creek noticed movement in the riverbank pier and ordered the bridge closed Friday afternoon. An estimated reopening date for the bridge will not be known until soils testing and analysis is completed. INDOT will work to provide updates as new information is available.
Chris Morisse Vizza and Hanna Smith, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier provide additional information:
What caused the bridge to drop 9 inches last week while construction crews worked to widen it has not yet been determined, pending further tests. Officials believe soil conditions and an underground artesian spring, in conjunction with construction work on the bridge, caused the structure to settle or sink into the ground, necessitating its closure.
Engineers apparently feel that using the Southbound bridge to provide one lane of traffic each way is not a viable option because the lanes would be too narrow. As of yet, there is no timeline for re-opening until the tests come back. “Closed until further notice” is an ominous phrase. Those of us in Tippecanoe County suddenly find ourselves discussing routes to and from Indy as assiduously as we normally discuss the weather and basketball.
I see pundits trying to fix the blame for this on Gov. Pence. I’m open to additional information on the subject, but for now, I’m not buying it. Certainly I don’t see eye-to-eye with the man on some of his policy preferences. The fixation on the surplus as a metric of government efficiency or economic health strikes me as a pernicious bit of modern day mercantilism. Economic health isn’t indicated by the amount of wealth a state is able to amass but, rather, (at least in part) by the velocity with which the money flows.
In a very real way, the velocity of money is tied to the velocity with which goods and people can get around. Your goods are going to cost more if you are paying truck drivers extra to sit in traffic moving stuff from the factory to the store. So, in that respect, $2 billion in the bank is less valuable that $2 billion invested in public infrastructure.
But, we need to be more concerned about fixing the problem than we are on fixing the blame. We need engineers to identify the problem and solutions for restoring the bridge to safety. We need construction companies and workers to implement the repair. We need to be more pro-active about identifying deteriorating infrastructure and spending the money necessary to fix it — preferably during economic periods where unemployment is high and interest rates are low. And, rather than railing against government, we need to learn from this problem and take a moment to appreciate the infrastructure we have and figure out how to improve and expand it.
INDOT, please toss some money to The Hoosier State NOW to add daily routes to the Indy/Lafayette line. This would help commuters and would be a great stimulus to prime the ridership for a long term capacity increase.
Dog, that sucks about the bridge. But a good segue into the state surplus. About once a month on local NPR I will hear Pence trumpeting the huge state surplus. And you do make a good analogy to mercantilism, but I have to confess I have not thought much about mercantilism since economic classes in college.
If the state is hoarding cash, the velocity of that cash is zero MPH. It is a patent indicator that taxes are to high or state spending is to low to meet the obligations that the state has agreed to fund. It is in no sense, as you note, an indicator of economics health of the state. It is indicia of economic inefficiency. Even it the state spent the surplus on strip bar parties for state employees, the surplus would be used more efficiently.
Apropos of not very much, the strip bar parties reminded me of this old story out of the Department of the Interior:
Perhaps the hoarding of the surplus at the cost to education and infrastructure should be portrayed as a half-baked economic development strategy.
It’s well and good to budget to have an appropriate surplus. I know it’s part of the pitch to companies located outside Indiana – “we have a surplus, we know what we’re doing. We aren’t going to sock you with a big tax increase. Come locate your business here.”
But here’s the thing – once here, you can’t find anyone to work at your business because the locals don’t have the education and skills, no one wants to come to Indiana because we aren’t welcoming of people not like us (hello, RFRA), and you can’t get your products or services anywhere because the infrastructure lags what is available elsewhere.
So what good does a surplus do at that point?
We get what we pay for, and there’s nothing left to cut. I’m not a fan of tax increases, but if the current state is the alternative, sign me up.
The financial system modern day Republicans have adopted in not new. In fact, it was one of the earliest economic programs of modern states. It involved having the national treasury filled up with gold and silver that came from the nation’s colonies. The system was called ‘mercantilism’. Spain was the most successful with it.
(footnote: it ruined their economy, too, because just like the Gov. and the Gen. Ass. is doing now, they concentrated on storing money away, not studying how to actually make it by having people work.) .
I tweeted with Dave Bangert (name-dropper) and others about what route I should take, because I’m driving that stretch in a few days. The consensus seems to be I’m OK driving south, but north I should actually take 74 to 41, then 41 to 52 to get back to 80-94 and Chicago. Is it that bad?
It might be that bad. Check out Hannah Smith Kiefer’s “Diary of a Detour.” She’s a journalist with the Lafayette Journal & Courier and, during the first bridge closure, she took the INDOT prescribed detour. It didn’t look fun.
If you are going to Chicago, as long as you are on U.S. 41, stay on U.S. 41 and take it to U.S. 30 in Lake County (known as “God’s Country”). Take U.S. 30 to Illinois and I-394 north. When you are on I-394, it will give you the option of going straight into Chicago on 94, or to Wisconsin/Iowa on I-294 around the city. All roads are 4-lane divided highway.
Between the two roads, U.S. 41 and I-65, I’ll take 41. It’s less crowded, very few 18-wheelers, and if something bad happens, you can always go around it. On I-65, you are stuck until traffic clears, and the detour may be horrendous. U.S. 41 has a few more stoplights, but it’s pretty quick and you don’t have to fight the 70 mph bumper to bumper traffic in which you are snuggled between 18-wheelers on the Borman (80/94). In a crash, they may find you in a week or two.
It’s always nice to get on I-394 earlier, but there are some little turns and twists that you probably don’t want to learn.