August 15, 2002

Indiana's Department of Transportation (INDOT) just released their draft environmental impact study regarding the I-69 highway. The elimination of the least-costly and least-damaging route along with the emphasis on the original route telegraphs only a single conclusion: Despite the millions spent on consultants, despite the overwhelming outpouring of public opposition, I-69 will barrel through Monroe County along the same alignment ("3C") first proposed a decade ago. That alignment will take it down SR37 to Victor Pike, along Victor Pike to Tramway Rd., and then westward to Greene county. In the process, it will destroy one of the last remaining and most beautiful rural areas in the county, potentially devastate the limestone industry, and cut western Monroe County from eastern Monroe County.

Progressive areas of our nation from California (which is dismantling parts of its urban interstate infrastructure) to Maryland (which has placed a moratorium on urban interstate building) have faced the reality: we are in a period of rapidly diminishing returns from highway building in the United States. Unfortunately, Indiana is determined to live up to its growing reputation as the "Mississippi of the North" by promoting exactly that which other communities have discovered is harmful to their economic health.

Perhaps a new slogan is in order: Indiana, out of the gate thirty years too late.

The Bloomington Herald Times recently published an editorial arguing the economic benefits of bringing I-69 through Bloomington and Monroe County. In the spirit of debate, we would like to provide an alternate view of those benefits and demonstrate how I-69 is not likely to provide them or is ill-suited for those goals.

Building a Life Sciences Corridor

We agree that an important part of Indiana's economic future involves supporting and building on its biomedical assets but it's a stretch to think that a truck highway is integral to that goal. The products of Life Sciences are patient records, research reports, genetic data, etc. Products which require information, not truck, highways. Employers and employees in the life sciences value environmental, social, and civic amenities over industrial infrastructure. If we are to attract the highly-educated and highly-compensated individuals who form the core of life science research and development then we must make a concerted effort to preserve those qualities of life.

Connecting Crane

The H-T editorial argues that the twenty trucks which service Crane daily are ample justification for I-69 even though this represents just 0.2% of all the trucks expected to transit I-69 every day. A better solution is to recognize that Crane's physical product, military ordnance, is more safely and economically carried by its existing rail infrastructure (which connects to all important national military installations) while its knowledge products are best carried by fiber-optic data cables.

Free Trade is here to stay / Business want to locate near Interstates / Efficiency is critical

We've lumped these three arguments together because they're all restatements of the same point. First, yes free trade is here to stay and when I-69 is viewed as a national "free trade corridor," instead of just a Bloomington to Evansville convenience, then the arguments against the US-41/I-70 route evaporate. For the nation it will be cheaper, more efficient, and less damaging to the environment to connect Canada and Mexico via US-41/I-70.

Second, labor costs overwhelmingly outrank infrastructure when it comes to location choices made by multi-national corporations. Toyota did not locate in southern Indiana due to its proximity to I-64 any more than RCA relocated to Mexico because of its excellent limited-access truck highways. Toyota came here because labor and land in Indiana are cheaper than they are in Japan. A far more effective industrial economic policy for Indiana involves encouraging corporations located in high-wage nations (particularly those in Western Europe) to relocate factories to our medium-wage nation. Two billion dollars would fund a robust State Economic Development Corporation.

Third, Indiana is fourth in the nation in rural interstate density, behind only Vermont, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. All business owners and economists understand the concept of diminishing returns. We have twice as much interstate, per square mile, as does California. How much more do we need to build before we catch up to that economic powerhouse?

Southwestern Indiana needs help

There are only five counties, home to 40,000 families, in southwestern Indiana that are not currently served by a four-lane divided highway. If those who espouse the rhetoric of helping Indiana's southwestern poor are serious, they will support investing the two billion dollars of Indiana taxpayer's money into social, not corporate, welfare. The cost of I-69 invested in a conservative trust fund will yield over $2500 per southwestern Indiana family, per year, forever.

Those funds can be used to help families relocate to adjacent counties, obtain additional education, start a business, etc. all without the environmental and social disruption of yet another truck highway.

The bottom line

The bottom line is that, like virtually all highway projects, I-69 is a political objective that sometimes masquerades as a job objective, sometimes as an economic objective, and sometimes as a transportation objective. The fact that its proponents are unable to name the concrete advantages of more government investment in interstate infrastructure, in a state that already leads the nation in such infrastructure, should set off warning bells in the homes of all Indiana taxpayers.

Indiana cannot move forward by looking to yesterday's solutions for tomorrow's challenges. It is time to invest not in more outdated road technology but in digital information infrastructure as well as more efficient and less costly methods of moving goods. Indiana needs now an infrastructure that prepares it for the knowledge and service economy of the future while reducing our dependence on foreign oil, improving our natural environment, reducing pollution, and delivering job improvement in quality, not quantity.

The bottom line is that the "no-build" option is the cheapest and least damaging option for Indiana.