To the editor:

MNDOT is demoralized.  Potholes are ravaging the vehicles of everyday Minnesotans.  Stubbornness and playing political games are the guiding principals of our state’s governor. Minnesota’s standing as a transportation leader has been ruined.  If we want safe roads taxes have to be raised.

Those are not my words.  Those words came from Wade Vitalis in last week’s paper.   Vitalis is the campaign manager for our state representative (Jeremy Kalin), although he always leaves that fact out when he writes his letters.  It seems Vitalis and Kalin would rather see the readers of this paper dwell on emotion instead of facts when thinking about transportation safety in this state.

Regarding the issue of transportation and whether passing a $6.6 billion transportation bill was necessary to make them safer, nothing can support an argument better than knowing the facts.

Here are some relevant facts.  One of the worst bridges in Minnesota, the Hastings Bridge would cost just $95 million to replace and much, much less than that to fix (the option chosen to this point).

Another relevant fact is that in 2006, at the same time that the nation was experiencing a very slight decrease in motor vehicle deaths, Minnesota saw the number of deaths decrease to a rate not seen since World War II (MN Dept. of Public Safety).  I know this is hard to believe given the rhetoric you may have heard recently about our unsafe roads, but it is a fact nonetheless.

Another important fact is that 33 percent  of all deaths on Minnesota roads are alcohol related. The $6.6 billion transportation bill is silent on the issue of drunk drivers.  The bill is also silent on the issue of illegal immigration even though the four deaths in Cottonwood, Minn., proved what most people already knew, that illegal immigration is an issue of public safety that our state legislature has largely ignored.

Also related to traffic safety is the fact that Minnesota leads the nation in a very grim statistic.  From ‘04 - ‘06, 18.4 percent of all Minnesota traffic fatalities involved a teen driver (The National Center for Statistics and Analysis).

Even though Minnesota leads the nation in this area, the recent transportation bill just passed does not address any safety related improvements involving teen driving, improvements many other states have already put into place while seeing fatalities caused by teen drivers decline as a result. 

So, while the DFL leaders would rather have the public stay away from facts and instead use the emotion of the I-35W bridge tragedy to get their transportation bill passed, it seems like it would have made better sense to take a step back, inhale deeply and spend some time looking at facts before passing a fundamentally flawed $6.6 billion tax increase.

Bob Barrett
Shafer

 

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