Toledo Blade: Stop the casino corridor (in New Orleans)

[Robbien]

FIRST came Alaska's infamous "bridges to nowhere." Now, an even more outrageous plan is afoot in Congress to blackjack taxpayers for a casino corridor along Mississippi's Gulf Coast.

A $106.5 billion Iraq war appropriations bill moving through the Senate includes a quiet rider: a $700 million down payment on creation of a boulevard along the route of U.S. 90, through Biloxi and other cities, where developers are busily rebuilding oceanside gambling casinos wiped out last year by Hurricane Katrina.

The money would pay to tear out a major coastal rail line which its owner, CSX, has spent some $250 million to repair just since the hurricane. Train traffic would be shifted to another line to the north and the right of way would be converted to a realigned U.S. 90, a "pedestrian-friendly beach boulevard" for tourists to use as they "spend more time strolling among the casinos and taking in the views," in the words of a state commission.

. . .


If Mississippi can justify redeveloping the casino region with a beach boulevard, it should compete for federal money through the normal federal transportation-funding process. As it is, this project looks mostly like a grand giveaway to casino interests and real estate developers.

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060425/OPINION02/604250310/-1/OPINION

[Glorfindel]

1. Why not let us Mississippians pay tolls? Works fine in New York!

I'm always amazed that people in other states suffer in silence while subsidizing vast highway and bridge construction projects in the south. We don't pay any tolls here in Mississippi. If the casino bosses want their own "boulevard," let them build it with no tax money involved.