Mobile MPO temporarily takes the Mobile River bridge project off Transportation Improvement Plan
The Alabama Department of Transportation experienced yet another setback on Wednesday for its controversial plan to build a bridge of the Mobile River and replace the existing Mobile Bayway. The Mobile Metropolitan Planning Organization voted unanimously to table all items related to the construction of ALDOT’s $2.1 billion toll bridge plan.
What normally would be a mere formality for a project that has advanced this far turned into a raucous public confrontation when an estimated one hundred toll bridge opponents showed up at the normally staid meeting of public officials demanding that they vote to kill the unpopular toll bridge proposal.
“The vote by the Mobile Metropolitan Planning Organization to approve the whole Transportation Improvement plan was quietly expected to sail through a process mandated by a federal law known as MAP-21,” State Auditor and toll opponent Jim Zeigler (R) said in a statement. “Succinctly, MAP-21 requires federal spending to be approved a local transportation planning group, in this case the South Alabama Regional Planning Commission’s MPO.”
The federal government will not fund a project that community leaders do not want and the Mobile MPO consists mostly of local Mobile County elected officials, and they were adverse to defying the collective will of the public…….at least to their faces with TV cameras rolling. That this has been a transportation priority of the Mobile MPO for years did not factor into Wednesday’s decision.
Read more: https://www.alreporter.com/2019/08/23/mobile-mpo-temporarily-takes-the-mobile-river-bridge-project-off-transportation-improvement-plan/