The stimulus and road construction

I’ve been driving in the greater DC metro area a lot more than normal in the past few weeks and have been noticing new road construction projects. Assuming these projects are funded by the recent stimulus plan, I don’t know if they are I would guess they are but I don’t know for sure, I wonder what, if any, thought these “stimulus architects” gave to the externalities of these road construction projects. They certainly don’t speed up traffic and in fact seem to cause more congestion resulting in more wasted time and agerviation and second, the construction tears up ones car resulting in the individual’s car requiring additional maintenance than expected. While yes, that spending may “help” the economy but does it help the individual? Do  the benefits the “stimulus spending” on road construction really outweigh the cost of wasted time and additional car repairs on the individual?

I don’t know what the answer is, but I know I am not a fan of the road construction! Granted, one could make the argument if the repairs were not done than the poor quality of roads would result in wasted time and damage expense. However, in my limited experience thus far, I feel the roads that fall into the later category are not under construction but the roads I never had a problem with are all torn up.

Hopefully it’s better elsewhere, or at the very least someone considered the impact on the individual before starting these projects.

Posted in Randomness on August 10th, 2009

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