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Improve existing highways, don’t seek ‘rooftop’ highway

Posted 10/27/11

To the Editor: The politicians continue to rachet up the noise level regarding the “proposed” rooftop highway. The new group YesEleven has joined in the fray and has drawn sharp criticism for …

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Improve existing highways, don’t seek ‘rooftop’ highway

Posted

To the Editor:

The politicians continue to rachet up the noise level regarding the “proposed” rooftop highway.

The new group YesEleven has joined in the fray and has drawn sharp criticism for being “isolationist.” For those who haven’t noticed, we are in fact, isolated, but not for want of a four-lane highway.

We live in a rough and scenic area that is on the very edge of continental USA. We have survived on the extraction industries of logging and mining, dairy farming and the polluting heavy industries in Massena. The trees and minerals are gone and the dairy industry is barely surviving.

The American auto industry is in intense competition with foreign car makers. People move away from here because of the climate, the distance to the American Heartland and lack of jobs. The population has not grown in 100 years.

Highways get built to serve existing industry and population needs and there are no fewer than two dozen actually proposed federal highways already with government’s full attention. The people proposing this boondoggle are either ill-informed or treacherously cynical. There is no chance of a rooftop highway being built.

There is, however, ample opportunity for us to waste a lot of exploratory money, lose sight of the true needs and attainable goals that could help the area, and severely divide the population of the area.

Should this highway proposal be given any serious consideration, one must first understand the failed logic of its proponents, that the road would somehow bring prosperity. Instead of a “field of dream” it is a “road of dreams,” ie., build it and they will come.

Apparently the politicians have never been to the Utica/Rome four-lane corridor with its record high arson rates, abandoned homes and offices and blighted neighborhoods. A four-lane through the North Country would be just that, a way to get through here quickly.

The $4 billion price tag is often mentioned, but I consulted the federal government’s lane/mile data and found that the price tag suggested reflects multiplying the shortest possible straight route times the smallest federal cost per mile of construction. The $4 billion does not allow for turns, rivers, swamps, mountains, bridges, clover-leafs or any other difficulties including land acquisition and the proposed adjunct corridors to various cities along the way. I suggest that the price tag of $4 billion is incorrect by as much as $12 to $20 billion.

The people who propose the road are for the most part a group of politicians and “industry leaders” who do not live on the land that the road would occupy. This is not the early 1950s and unlike the Seaway project, opposition to the land grab would be fierce and intense. Litigation could drag this foolish idea out for years and drive the cost to an absurd level.

Wake up, there are a few communities addressing the superficially benign issue of wind turbines and the opposition has been ugly and acrimonious. The turbines occupy a few acres of land, not hundreds of miles of asphalt and concrete stretching the width of upstate New York.

I encourage everyone to contact those who are pushing for this new Interstate and let your feeling be heard. The road will never be built, but the idea serves as a dangerous distract from what needs to be done, namely improve the highways we already have and make them a safe and efficient means to travel in and around our communities.

Elia Filippi

Richville