For the second time in a week, The Courier-Journal’s editorial board hath ordered another curious article about the $4.1 billion Ohio River Bridges Project, which, for the record, aims to construct:
- An East End bridge.
- A Downtown bridge.
- A Butchertown/Waterfront-killing redesign of Spaghetti Junction.
- 1,000-plus miles of concrete barriers, dragon’s teeth and minefields blocking every possible paved entrance to Louisville Metro featuring signs that read “Yeah, but you’d probably enjoy Nashville more anyhow.”
With the article in question, The C-J has introduced a weird new line of rhetoric into the tolling debate, which has taken a sharp turn toward full-on panic since the Louisville-Southern Indiana Bridges “Authority” announced a potential six dollar round-trip toll: Namely, that Louisvillians are whiny bitches who don’t know what’s good for them. While I normally agree with that sentiment during an election cycle, the content of the story is a little troubling for other reasons.
Since then, motorists have been quick to forget how the state’s highway system was built, (Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Spokesman Chuck) Wolfe said, noting, “You have a whole generation now that doesn’t have any experience with paying tolls in this state.”
Unlike other communities, Kentuckians haven’t been getting raped on a regular basis by tolling authorities like the amazing citizens of San Francisco, who live in the most expensive neighborhoods on the planet and don’t even know what six dollars looks like.
The article also glosses over the differences between the leading mayoral candidates, Councilman Hal Heiner, R-19, and Democrat Greg Fischer, essentially saying they’re the same:
Mayoral candidates scoffed at the estimates as too high.
That one simple sentence belies the fact that Heiner favors a scaled-down version of the project, advocating the construction of an East End bridge first and then a Downtown span, if at all. As for Fischer, nobody is sure what he believes because he hasn’t articulated anything specific yet, perhaps the result of a reluctance to burn mental calories. This implied lack of distinction allows both candidates to blur together as a homogeneous anti-tolling pair when, in fact, they hold pretty different stances on the issue.
But the most egregious part of the article isn’t contained in the article itself, but appears as a tiny blurb alongside it:
TOLLS: NOT ALWAYS POPULAR
Kentucky’s first tollgate was established in 1797, at Cumberland Ford on what was then called the “Wilderness Road,” or “Boone Trace,” from Virginia into Kentucky. A century later, expanded tolls on a 7,000-mile system of privately maintained turnpikes in Lexington, Louisville and Maysville met “open rebellion” in 1896, according to The Courier-Journal’s archives. “Toll houses were burned, barriers destroyed, and tollgate keepers horse-whipped” prompting counties to buy the privately owned roads and free them to public travel.
In other words, if you oppose tolls, you’re a drunken pyromaniac at best, a filthy terrorist/enemy of the state at worst. Once again, we have to hand it to the C-J — but for what, I’m not sure.