To the Editor:

If someone came to you with an offer to let you in on a great investment scheme on the conditions that you give him; a huge amount of money, not ask questions, take his word for everything, and be prepared to wait decades for the payoff, most prudent people would run as fast as they could in the other direction.

So I would have thought, before I started following the ongoing saga of the, “Rooftop Highway” a few years ago.

I cannot recall a time when I have seen an advertising and promotion scheme, based on next to no actual information or data, lead so many people to buying into such a far-fetched, costly and overreaching concept.

The entire foundation of this idea is based on the shared article of faith that, “... if we build it, they might come.”

To date, several highway studies have been referenced by the, “Roof-Toppers” main promoters, in support of spending what was originally said to be four billion dollars, which by today’s prices is likely to be significantly higher, (not to worry; it’s only Government money).

Coupled to this is the continuing claim that the project will create 27,000 jobs. These numbers have not been substantiated to the public, except for vague references to ‘DOT Reports,’ ‘a GAO study,’ none of which anybody seems to be able to produce or find, much less the source data that must exist to generate these kinds of reports.

There was a transportation analysis of the Rt. 11 corridor, the main corridor of commerce across the region, created and published by the Development Authority Of The North Country and The New York State Department Of Transportation in December of 2008.

That report studied every village town and county along the route. It did economic profiles, population profiles, traffic counts, traffic patterns, travel times, strategies to modernize and through-bypass ‘choke-points’ where needed.

It spoke in detail about environmental impacts and a total cost analysis of the project. The costs, incidentally, were about one-sixth of the “Roof-Top” estimates. Moreover, the report stated that these Rt. 11 upgrades were all upgrades that would be required to be done to support a full interstate highway, should growth and infrastructure needs ever indicate such an expansion.

So, it would seem that we’re supposed to build an interstate highway that completely divides towns and communities across Northern New York in half.

It takes scarce resources away from badly needed maintenance and improvements to our eroding current transportation infrastructure, which supports our local economies across the region.

Finally, it creates a third economic development corridor, based, apparently, on no hard data, for $4-8 billion of money that we don’t have. Incredibly, we are supposed to do all of this on faith and a bet. So far, that’s all that the public has been offered.

John Danis, Rensselaer Falls