Funding without a strategy

The Federal government grants don’t completely finance projects, but rather they fill holes in funding plans. My issue is that some of these awards are not part of any coherent transportation policy.

Sure, the list of 2013 grant recipients in the TIGER program includes a few real deepsea ports, but the challenge for politicians and bureaucrats in programs like TIGER is to balance ‘pork’ (slang for projects with benefits to a particular locality) with the needs of a transportation system that everyone agrees needs help, which implies a focus on major ports. So, what then should we make of wharf construction in Garibaldi, Oregon (which I had not previously heard of, being an East Coast guy), which will be gaining more than $1m for fixing up its wharf. What about Portland?

In Maryland, not far down the coast from New York, $10m was awarded to partially fund some dredging at a container terminal in Baltimore with spoil to be used for beefing up an existing automobile export terminal. Houston, happily not a competitor to my beloved Big Apple, has also received a $10m grant for expanding the quay at an existing container terminal, enabling it to handle bigger ships. These are real projects.

The project that received the biggest port related award – $14m – will encourage biomass exports. The Jackson County Port Authority, in Mississippi, will be relocating a rail line which otherwise would go right through downtown Pascagoula. The railroad would bring wood pellets to a yet to be constructed terminal, for shipment to places like Germany where stoves are fuelled with this material. Another forest products exporter, Eastport, Maine (which also sends cattle abroad), got a $6m grant, about half of the cost of work on an old breakwater. Definitely real ports, and real projects.

But, some projects are head scratchers. Just up the bay from Baltimore is Wilmington, Delaware. Wilmington has been awarded $10m for fixing up two old docks. The DOT says that this work will assist in “preventing the loss of customers to alternative foreign ports”. Coincidentally, Wilmington is vice president Joe Biden’s home-town – but that’s politics, right?