Dear Editor:
Highway safety advocates looking at our election results ask: “Can we expect a new direction in our transportation policy or will we be treated to more of the same old same old?”
The regime of dysfunctional transportation policy, which I believe is a product of the efforts of the Politico-Transit Alliance, may continue. Or, if we can learn from the lessons of the past, new leadership can make a course correction that we desperately need. Before we can begin fixing our roads, we must first change our priorities.
Instead of maintaining politically motivated schemes of wasteful publicly-owned transit boondoggles, I believe that it is time to make highway safety our highest priority in government action, not just in press releases.
Our local government leaders, our COG’s directors and our legislators, must look into their mirrors, see the problem and steer us on a course correction.
Voters now know their new set of representatives who will be making crucial decisions in our transportation policy for the next six-year transportation cycle (2004-2010).
Will this set of leaders condemn us to the recurring mistake of their predecessors? Or, have we learned from history?
As the debate on reauthorization of Transportation Equity Act for the 21 century heats up, it is time for highway safety advocates to try, once again, to tear down the Iron Curtain in American transportation policy and demand new transportation priorities from our new set of leaders.
Absent changes in our policy and priorities, we will continue to suffer all the ills of our divided House.
Will it be more wasteful socialist transit, while highway deaths and injuries mount? Or will our new leadership make a course correction, restoring free enterprise transportation as the foundation upon which we build?
Highway safety advocates will be closely watching, and hoping, and praying for ourselves and for our children.
Joseph P. Thompson
Tres Pinos
