If you haven’t heard of either Woodland or Hanna, or, for that matter, the larger, adjoining towns of Francis and Tabiona, don’t feel bad. Neither have most of the people in Utah, where these microdots of civilization are located. We are talking about towns of fewer than 300 people. Hanna and Tabiona are on the east end of the proposed road. Woodland and Francis are on the west. In between is a 9,500-foot-high pass that is closed by snow from about mid-November until early July most years. I live in Woodland. Ours is the last place before the paved road peters out. For the next 26 miles over the summit, the road is pretty bad. It’s steep, rough and narrow. In the summer, when the pass is open, the road claims about one muffler a day.
On the Woodland side of the mountain, we are within an hour of Salt Lake City. When I feel the need to shop at Nordstrom or watch the Jazz beat the Bulls, it’s not a bad drive. Most of my neighbors have taken jobs “down the hill” in Salt Lake or nearby ski areas.
From the Hanna side of the mountain, Salt Lake is a long drive. Hanna residents have to go around the mountains instead of over them, taking about two and a half hours. It’s too long for commuting. There is virtually no employment except on family farms and ranches. Most people in Hanna want the dirt road improved and paved. They even want it plowed in winter so they can drive over the 9,500-foot pass to get jobs in Salt Lake if they want to.
On the Woodland side, we have our doubts. Our little general store struggled for years before finally closing last fall. It was a victim of our proximity to the city. Paving the road from our end would invite a million people from Salt Lake to roar through our town heading into the national forest in the mountains for recreation. The nearest 7-Eleven is 30 miles away, but already every weekend there are Big Gulp cups tossed in my yard. In May, the official traffic count at my house showed 149 cars per day. According to the EIS, that will increase to 810 cars per day in the summer if the road is improved. The road will still be closed just past my driveway in the winter because the State of Utah doesn’t have enough money to plow miles over 9,500-foot passes for only 800 cars a day.
So for a couple of years, we have all gone to hearings, arguing essentially local issues with federal officials who have come from other states. The money being spent is federal, and I can’t help but question why the Federal Highway Administration and the Forest Service are so determined to spend $20 million of your tax dollars to build a road to connect two towns of 300 people for about five months a year.
Recently, I have watched state highway officials on the news telling parents in Salt Lake that their children will “just have to be careful” crossing a six-lane expressway on their way to school. The state doesn’t have money to build a pedestrian bridge. Closer to home, state officials told our county that it may be several years before they can afford to install a stoplight at a major highway intersection that has claimed several lives. There is no money.
But the Feds have $20 million to pave the road from Woodland to Hanna.
I don’t know about you, but $20 million still sounds like a lot of cash to me. I look around my small town and see a lot of things we need to spend some money on. Our water system needs work. There is a bridge that is a little too narrow. We have a street light that winks out whenever headlights shine on it, so it lights the intersection only when nobody is there which is most of the time. But if I added up all the needs of my little town, I couldn’t spend $20 million. Not even half of it.
Look around your own neighborhood and see what you could do with $20 million. Fix up a park, a library or a school? How about offering prenatal care to 8,000 women who wouldn’t otherwise get it? Twenty million would put cops on a lot of street corners. It might even pay off a bit of the national debt.
But don’t get your hopes up. That $20 million will eventually be spent paving the road from Woodland to Hanna. The money is programmed under federal law. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act signed by President Bush in 1991 continued an old program that sets aside a specific percentage of the federal gasoline tax to improve roads through public lands such as the national forest. It has already been earmarked, and there is no way the money can be diverted to other, more pressing needs.
Not that our needs aren’t pressing. According to the EIS, there is a real need to provide more highways for scenic drives, and turnouts where deer hunters and fishermen can park. I’m sure there is nothing more compelling in your community. If this were an isolated instance, it might not be so bad. Twenty million out of the federal budget is nothing. But this is deeply entrenched in statutes, and there are dozens of similar programs earmarking similiar amounts for equally unnecessary projects. This is money looking for a place to get spent, rather than a project looking for funding. And meanwhile, real transportation needs in my area and yours are underfunded. Next time you hear that there isn’t any money for health care or textbooks, remember that there was $20 million to pave the road from Woodland to Hanna. I can hardly wait to pay my taxes.
