We’re spending way too much building roads

Steve Hiniker is quoted in this article by Robert Mentzer, wausaudailyhearld.com

Is Wisconsin building roads for traffic that won’t ever be there?

We’re driving less. So why does Wisconsin keep spending more and more on roads — and not just to maintain the infrastructure we have but actually to build new, wider highways?

This is the question being put to policymakers by Bruce Speight, director of the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group, and Steve Hiniker, executive director of the environmental advocacy group 1000 Friends of Wisconsin.

“We want a reprioritization of the transportation fund,” Speight said in a recent phone interview. “Right now we are squandering billions of dollars on highway expansion projects we don’t need.”

The particular projects Speight and Hiniker have in their sights are the big, expensive expansions of Wisconsin’s most trafficked roads in the southeastern part of the state. That’s a corridor that is used by a relatively small slice of the state’s overall population, but it gets a disproportionate share of the state’s transportation budget.