For those of you who do not live in South Alabama, do not cross the Mobile Bay with any frequency or simply don't care, there was a recent move by the state and ALDOT to build a massive, glittering monument to excess across the bay. The efforts of an organized group of citizens forced the state's hand and derailed the project.
The new bridge was to have bicycle paths (for the three cyclists a year that want to ride across on an Interstate), a walking path (for the one person who could survive the walk without suffering heat stroke), observation decks, elevators and assorted other puffery. The bridge was going to be the second highest in the country, only slightly behind the Golden Gate Bridge. To finance this multi-billion dollar spectacle, the state announced a plan to charge drivers a $6 toll (+40% convenience fee) each way. Or regular travelers could purchase a $90 per month (+40% convenience fee) transponder per car. Larger vehicles such as semis, RVs, boats, etc would incur higher rates. The tolls would be in place for the next 55 years.
On top of this, the state (ALDOT and Kay Ivy primarily) were set to hand over control of the bridge (and the toll rates) to foreign (mostly Arabian) investors.
Citizens balked. ALDOT director John Cooper and Guvhah Ivy at first declared that the bridge was a done deal and we should just eat the shit sandwich we were being served with grace.
More citizens joined the balking.
Both ALDOT and Ivy started crawfishing. They claimed federal regulations required the bridge to meet the specifications they provided (not true). They then claimed that climate change forced them to build this bridge so high and to tear down the current bridge (also not true). They gave several other debunked rationales for the obscene cost.
Ivy then bleated that she was tired of the noise, noise, noise (grinch?) and didn't care about the concerns. She was building that bridge and if we didn't like tolls we needed to find some other way to pay for it. This pissed a lot of people off.
The angry citizens discovered that the state had rejected some federal funding that could have paid for portions of the bridge. They found that the state had failed to apply for other funding. They found that ALDOT had to return tens of millions of dollars allocated to the project because it wasn't used.
The citizens wondered what was up and began digging. There are indications the Mobile Port was on the verge of being turned over to an Arabian conglomerate (from the UAE) and would be under its control. There were rumors that both tunnels would be destroyed and the bay dredged in order to get larger ships into the ports to satisfy the UAE investors. In digging through the trail of documentation, this appears to be more than rumor.
Ivy set an October meeting to discuss possible alternatives to tolling, but defiantly declared the bridge was going forward, constituent wishes be damned.
The citizen's group (now being led by the wacky Jim Ziegler) learned that the project could be delayed by either (or both) Mobile County and Baldwin County removing the bridge from their respective Transportation Improvement Plans. Mobile had the first shot and chickened out under pressure from Cooper and from Ivy. Cooper begged Mobile to keep the bridge on the TIP and he would provide a plan at some later date that might alleviate the tolls ... or something.
Baldwin County? Went to war with the Guvnah. Even after she sent them a letter full of thinly veiled threats about removing future ALDOT projects from the county, the Baldwin County delegation rejected the toll plan and removed the bridge from its Transportation Improvement Plan.
Ivy? The old battle axe who said all along she was open to finding other ways to pay for it, but it was going to be built no matter what we wanted and we could just suck on tolls until she was long, long dead? Within five minutes of the Baldwin County vote, she pronounced the project dead and canceled the scheduled October meeting to allegedly research other options to finance the bridge. So apparently she's a lying ass liar or she and ALDOT have some nefarious backdoor plan to screw us over royally.
Even if they do come back with something wretched, watching this unfold gave me the same sense of satisfaction I got way back when during the Never To Yield campaign against the people lying about Cam. Watching people who'd simply had enough rise up and enact change was a beautiful thing. Forcing the government to back down from a disastrous plan was the kind of thing this country was built on.
Is there a need for a bridge? I personally don't think so. But even if there is, there's no need for sky towers, zip lines, walking trails, motorcycle ramps, skateboard parks and all that other crap. There's no rationale for turning part of I10 over to foreign control or for selling the port to that group either.
I'm disgusted with Kay Ivey. She's a complete buffoon. This debacle could have her go down in history ass the worst governor ever. Worse than Loverboy Bentley. Worse than Dealing Don (who got a bad rap). Worse than Guy Hunt. And she deserves it. Between this and that crap gas tax she forced on us (lied there, too) she's done more negative than positive by far. I'm ashamed she calls herself an Auburn fan.
9 Replies
2285 Views