Ohio River Bridges: A reporter gets to work and the numbers start to unravel.

After years of baseless editorializing to the contrary, the Courier-Journal takes what for the Gannett paper is a major journalistic step forward: asserting that the economic impact of the Ohio River Bridges Project is "unclear". In other words, reporter Marcus Green was finally allowed to publish some answers to the sorts of questions he's been asking for a long time.

In considering the two most recent official project documents, Green says:

Taken together, the two studies paint a picture of a project that will create work during construction but offer no consensus on any permanent employment spurred by the two-bridge plan nor the potential impact of tolls.

As NAC previously reported, the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement - required because of state changes to the project of the sort the public was told were impossible - predicted slightly fewer permanent jobs in the region as a result of building the entire project as compared to not building it at all. Now, with the release of the finalized statement, even the construction jobs are being questioned along with other claims so eagerly inflated by project proponents:

The environmental study, for instance, shows that during the main construction period from 2012 to 2018, the project will create about 3,225 jobs each year. That compares with 4,118 projected in the Indiana study released in April.

Those estimates are a far cry from the nearly 57,000 jobs, each lasting a year, that were predicted in a 2009 study commissioned by The Bridges Coalition, a group of business, labor and local government interests advocating the project.

Finally, someone in the mainstream, commercial media called them out.

Worth noting, too, is that there is almost no local representation amongst the finalists for the construction contracts from either state, a situation that could reduce the ability of local workers to avail themselves of wages even further as companies bring in their outside crews; a few thousand temporary jobs perhaps, give or take a thousand or so, but not necessarily new ones and not necessarily of direct benefit to the local residents who'll be footing hundreds of millions in tolls over decades.

The final version of the impact document, the Supplemental Final Environmental Impact Statement (SFEIS) released in late April, shows much the same thing as the draft in terms of permanent jobs, with a shifting of long-term employment within the region as a result of the project but no additional jobs created as compared to a no-build option.

The environmental report, called the Supplemental Final Environmental Impact Statement, says it “did not attempt to predict whether the project would increase the total number of jobs in the region.” It also didn’t specifically address the impact of tolls.

It did, however, estimate that the Louisville area would have 803,844 jobs in 2030 and that, if the project were built, about 12,000 of those jobs would be created in Clark and Floyd counties. If the project weren’t built, they would have located in Jefferson and Oldham counties, the study says.

The SFEIS chart below shows the projected job totals in comparison.  The net difference in terms of projected long-term employment in the five-county project area is zero.

As further explanation of the regional jobs shift, the SFEIS provides a map showing projected areas of increased and decreased employment. Per the included key, red areas show job gains and blue job losses.

According to the article, local economists Eric Schansberg and Paul Coomes generally agree that the eastern portion of the project should help increase employment, while the downtown portion is more questionable. And while it may be somewhat tempting for Hoosiers to view those Indiana job gains as a big positive for the state, location matters both now and long into the future. The SFEIS predicts a clear pattern of job loss along the I-65 corridor from the river to I-265, precisely where billions in previous investments and infrastructure improvements have already been made.

Also of interest is that the smaller and/or less concentrated gains projected for areas not in or very near River Ridge are most often outside of the I-265 loop in predominantly rural areas where little infrastructure to support them currently exists (read as permanent, increased costs) and at least some residents are actively trying to control unwanted growth in order to mitigate the loss of natural habitat and rural lifestyles (read as permanent, increased costs). In terms of maximizing preexisting and soon-to-be investments, efficient use of financial, natural, and cultural resources, and sustainable development, the Bridges Project as currently proposed is a clunker.

Taken in conjunction with the previously reported "disproportionately high and adverse effect" of tolls the Federal Highway Administration predicts for much of the urban core, there are certainly many more socioeconomic questions in need of asking than real answers.

As Green gets to it, the backpedaling and contradictions evident in his article are worth the read in its entirety. Kentucky Governor Beshear said "the environmental report is 'not an economic one.'” Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Attorney Tim Hagerty said "the states chose not to predict overall job growth from the project because 'it was an area that involved some sort of controversy and it wasn’t necessary.'” It was apparently necessary, though, to sell the project to the public as a massive, generations-long, job creating machine for a number of years to get it to this point. The controversy comes from trying to make the stories match.

My favorite quote in the article, however, comes from Indiana District 72 Representative Ed Clere, who thinks the proper time to consider negative project impacts and how they might be alleviated is after we've fully committed billions and are already building it.

Clere said once an exact toll plan is known — including rates — officials will be in a position to study how to ease the impact on businesses, students, low-income residents and others.

“That’s a discussion that we need to be having after the project is already assured and construction is under way,” he said.

That attitude, friends, is not only what we're getting in the way of representation in this mess but why we are in it.