As a Michigander living in Austin, this sounds like a great idea to me. I’d have to know more specifics, though, such as whether the blurb about it cutting through national forests is true.
As for the joke… Michigan has both I-69 and Exit 69 from I-75 at Big Beaver Road. It’s a wonder anyone can ever find either (althought he Big Beaver Road sign is elevated over the freeway, so it would be hard to steal). Apparently there was even a hoax that went around about a call to change the name of I-69 to I-63.
That was my point. I’ve heard talk of this (growing up in Houston, one of the cities on the route) for 15-20 years. The first words of the OP were “The Bush Administration wants to…”, as if this was another hare-brained idea out of the current administration.
That’s because the first I heard of it was a report on All Things Considered last week, which presented it as if it were a completely new proposal from the present administration. Finding out it is not does not surprise me, however.
If you go through Lansing, Michigan there is a sign telling you that I-69 is turning into I-96 and I-96 is turning into I-69.
I found the sign to be one of the most confusing ones I’ve ever seen. However, I was going to Lansing, so I just got off the highway. Perhaps the extended I-69 will increase tourism to Lansing, one of America’s least interesting capital cities.
By piecing together existing Interstates, the trip from Port Huron to Laredo can already be accomplished on a route a little west of the planned corridor.
Starting in Laredo, take I-35 to Oklahoma City, then take I-44 to Saint Louis, then I-55 to Normal, IL, then I-39 to La Salle, IL, then I-80 to Fremont, IN, then I-69 to Port Huron. A variety of options and cutoffs can shorten this or lead to most major Midwest and Mississippi Valley cities.
I first heard about I-69 during the first Bush administration, when it was damned by many as pure pork being doled out by Bush. A few years later, I remember it being damned as Clinton pork, so I’m not surprised that it’s coming up again.
The impression I got when I first heard about it was that the route was designed to unnecessarily zigzag through as many states as possible, as servings of fresh pork to 22 senators representing eleven states. The I-69 link provided leaves Illinois and Missouri off the list (and I can’t imagine what the eleventh state would have been back then. Oklahoma, maybe?)
So the current version has trimmed down the I-69 project down to eight states. It still seems like a boondoggle to me. As paperbackwriter pointed out, there’s already a simple enough route that covers the same territory, and all you have to do is switch highways a couple of times. Nothing to it. I can understand wanting to extend a highway to Evansville, but this project seems unecessary, much like the porkified I-99 project in Pennsylvania, steered by the king of highway pork, Representative Bud Schuster, who spruced his old district up with an interstate to replace the already-sufficient route 220, and got the highway named after himself.
Maybe this is just pork. If it is, then it’s essentially non-partisan pork, with ten Republican senators benefiting and six Democratic senators (or, alternatively, five Republican and three Democratic governors. Don’t even ask me about which House members benefit…)
