By: Diane Benjamin
McLean County Regional Planning Commission: Metropolitan Long-Range Transportation Plan 2050
This report will be used by all local governments to make transportation decisions. Reading it will make you aware of what is coming. It is 311 pages, you don’t have to read every page since many are just the same information in different languages.
A survey was done on 2022, it was printed in English, Spanish, and French. After extensively advertising the survey, only 734 people completed it. (PDF page 38) Surveys participation has historically low participation, the results are treated as gold anyway. That 734 represents less than .05% of the population of McLean County.
Also on PDF page 38:
The biggest takeaway point is that 96% of respondents said investing in existing street repair and maintenance is either a medium or high priority when it comes to transportation issues, with nearly 80% stated it is a high priority.
Fixing the roads is not the focus of this plan however.
Public Comments to the completed plan are printed starting on PDF page 174. Some are common sense some believe the Climate Change propaganda.
Connect Transit losses are immaterial, the report mentions them 103 times and promotes further expansion.
PDF page 207:
- In what ways do you expect technology to alter the ways your business operates?
- Gas prices will likely drive consumers to EVs
- Freight will likely transition to EVs and autonomous vehicles sooner than consumers
Now see this story: https://www.thestreet.com/electric-vehicles/this-ev-maker-is-reportedly-losing-33k-on-every-truck-it-sells
The story is about Rivian and contains this:
The company sells its vehicles for about $80,000 each but it’s losing $33,000 on each vehicle sold due to high production costs, The Wall Street Journal reported. That’s the case even as the average EV sales price has fallen to $53,376 in August 2023 according to Cox Automotive.
Rivian is burning through cash. It’s success depends on what comes first: profitability or running out of funding. The stock price is stuck below $25 a share. Right now it’s $23.66.
This plan covers much more than I’ve reported. It needs to be read!
My impressions of this report for what it’s worth:
1. They made a big deal of the once in a century pandemic as if it will happen again tomorrow. I suppose to lend some credibility to their effort. But regardless they passed on incorporating any transportation planning related to pandemics, mainly because they don’t relate to each other.
2. Of course, they made a very big deal about the “climate emergency”, which is politically based not scientific. Therefore, all the CO2 reduction based planning and high sounding ideas in this report will be wasted money. Electric buses, new sustainable materials, new types of pavements, air quality monitoring, etc. is money down the drain. Man caused CO2 is a minuscule portion of what causes climate change, therefore throwing money at it is purely a political play.
“There is no climate emergency,” the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) said in its World Climate Declaration (pdf), made public in August. https://www.theepochtimes.com/science/over-1600-scientists-sign-no-climate-emergency-declaration-5482554?utm_source=ref_share&utm_campaign=copy
“There’s a lot of climate exaggeration,” said Mr. (Bill) Gates. “The climate is not the end of the planet. So, the planet is going to be fine.”
3. Equity was also on about every other page. But interestingly they define it as “equal access” which isn’t the common race-based definition used by the woke now.
“More simply, does the transportation system provide every person in the Bloomington-Normal urbanized area with equal access to their preferred transportation option, at locations close to their homes and destinations?”
4. Political Sustainability – does that mean censorship?
“In addition to environmental impacts, the MCRPC definition includes financial sustainability, operational sustainability, political sustainability and addressing any issues or controversies that might short-circuit support for the preservation and improvement of the transportation system.”
At the end of it all, after all the crowing about the goals – sustainability, resilience, safety, environmental equity, climate impact, impact of Covid, etc, – NONE of the list of future transportation projects have a link to any particular goal. So, what’s the use of this report? It’s a whole lot of empty words that end up with a list of millions of dollars of future road repair projects that we would have done anyway.
Ultimately this report is just meant to sooth the Federal bureaucrats by using the latest catch-phrase management mumbo jumbo.