Baloney "economic impact" analysis for DRIC approach road in Windsor EDITORIAL

When a government agency that has spent the past several years touting the virtue of a new free road, grants a political "scientist" a six figure sum to study the "economic impact" of that road, you'd better expect a lot more political propaganda than impartial economic analysis. The University of Windsor's academic standards are apparently not offended by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation's grant of $115k to William P Anderson, a professor of political science to study the "economic impact" of the Windsor Essex Parkway, an approach road from the H401 to the site of the proposed Detroit River International Crossing.

They don't have any economist at the University of Windsor to do economic impact studies? They have to use a political scientist?

State funded political scientist Anderson is quoted in the Windsor Star: "I’ve always wanted to follow a project like this on a month-by-month basis. You’ve got the construction phase, which will create hundreds of jobs, but after it’s done, you’re really changed the framing of the city."

Ontario transportation secretary Kathleen Wynne, head of the grant-making agency said their "partnering" with the university was "ideal" adding that the researchers "will follow our work and be able to tell us how the parkway will improve regional mobility."

But maybe it won't improve regional mobility.

The present plan for the Windsor Essex Parkway is to end it at the site of the proposed new DRIC toll bridge, a bridge which is quite unlikely to get built. Traffic at the border has been flat for a decade and the three existing crossings have surplus capacity. But the Parkway as designed won't improve access to any existing crossing.

Investor groups asked to bid for a DRIC bridge concession all have said the project is not viable as a toll concession. They want an availability payments deal in which the revenue risks of the new bridge are taken by the governments on both sides of the border. There is growing resistance in the Michigan legislature to putting taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars of bridge losses.

Come November's elections and a likely swing against free spending Democrats Michigan will, if anything, be more solid than now in its opposition to committing taxpayer money to prop up the extra crossing.

The Windsor Essex Parkway is a beautiful road to nowhere.

Real economic analysis as practiced by economists looks at benefits and costs, the return on capital invested and the productivity of this project as compared to other uses of the resources invested.

By that measure the Windsor Essex Parkway is a great white elephant - over a billion dollars of Ontario taxpayer money being spent on an approach road that won't be needed to a bridge that likely won't be built.

Even if the bridge does get built the expensive Parkway approach is not set up with tolls to garner some of the benefits for the Parkway investors (Ontario taxpayers). Inexplicably it will provide free rides. 

Zero return on investment there.

Any true economist would pan the Windsor Essex Parkway project as reckless and wasteful - a colossal boondoggle.

That perhaps is why the Ontario Ministry of Transportation made the economic impact study grant to a "political scientist" rather than to an economist. Shame on the University of Windsor for prostituting itself to the wastrel politicians - editor.

TOLLROADSnews 2010-08-25