Published: January 04, 2008 07:10 am            

It’s time to develop all of state

Guest View

Editor’s note: The following guest opinion was written by Ralph Waggener, President, South Central Printing, Inc., Columbia, Ky., in response to the Louisville Courier Journal’s December 17, 2007, series of articles critical of the development of Interstate 66.

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By RALPH WAGGENER

Guest Opinion Writer

The first time I ever heard of the “Road to Nowhere” was when Happy Chandler, running for Governor in 1953, called Governor Lawrence Wetherby’s proposed Kentucky Turnpike from Louisville to E-town, the “Road that starts nowhere and ends nowhere.”

Today, what was the Kentucky Turnpike is now part of I-65, one of the busiest roads in Kentucky.

Despite the lesson they could have learned from Happy’s hype, “Road to Nowhere” is what The Courier-Journal is calling Inter-state 66 now.

I had forgotten that Interstate 65, from Louisville to E-town, was first a toll road before becoming part of Interstate 65. My good friend, Mayor Pat Bell, reminded me of this. The story in the The Courier-Journal, by C.R. Dunlap, is a self-serving one.

I know that a new arena for basketball being built in downtown Louisville is going to be a lot more expensive located there than if they built somewhere else in Jefferson County. Reviving downtown Louisville has been a very expensive project, costing way too much money. But in the end, it probably will work out just like the subsidizing of Ford Motors and Toyota Motors has worked out. Both were much too expensive projects at the outset, but both paid off in the long run, just as Interstate 66 will in Southern Kentucky.

The districts that Interstate 66 would take in go through some areas of our state which have historically seen very little money spent on roads, especially during Democratic years. It’s better when the Republicans come to power every 30 or 40 years. Governor Ernie Fletcher changed that for Adair County, spending more on roads and bridges in Adair County than anyone (maybe all other governors combined) before. We had been promised a by-pass for over 50 years here in Columbia. Governor Fletcher built it.

We are now waiting Heartland Parkway from the Bluegrass Parkway to Columbia which would connect to KY 61 South and then Highway 111 in Tennessee. That will be a very sound investment for Kentucky, and the nation. It could lead to saving as much as one hour to two hours of driving time from Louisville to Chattanooga and would relieve traffic on a much too busy Interstate 65. Beyond that, it is environmentally sound, because it will mean far less fuel will be burned getting from Elizabethtown and points north to Chattanooga and all points south.

What is pork to The Courier-Journal, it seems by reading the paper, is any public money spent outside of Jefferson and surrounding counties. We seem to get roads in South Central Kentucky only when the Republicans and (or including?) Happy Chandler are in office. Interstate 66 is a dream of Rep. Hal Rogers, who knows as well as The Courier-Journal that interstates make the difference in our economy.

Why should The Courier-Journal trash our state? The only reason we can figure out is because federal and state dollars would not be spent in Louisville, but in a larger part of Kentucky which doesn’t go through Louisville.

I do a lot of business in Louisville and I have a lot of friends in Louisville and believe me, they don’t like the editorial policies any better than I do. The Courier’s editorials leave a bad impression of Louisville and its businesses there, just as they leave a bad taste when we have to stomach them.

Pikeville, London, Somerset, Russell Springs, Columbia, Edmonton, Glasgow and Bowling Green will benefit from this road. Is The Courier-Journal jealous that the rest of the state might benefit the way Louisville has from its road system?

For The Courier-Journal to have put a 3-1/2 page story together to trash our state is just unthinkable. No real Kentuckian would do this. It makes no sense. Are they afraid that they won’t get two bridges to cross the Ohio and be able to spend billions of dollars on the great lawn that gets flooded every year? Will that maintenance of the Great Lawn will be scrutinized by the CJ for the pork that it is? But of course The Courier-Journal is not owned by Kentucky people and they could care less about our thoughts or our state. I’m going to take my ball and go home if you don’t play by my rules, they seem to say. It seems sort of childish.

Pork is what The Courier-Journal calls any project outside of Jefferson County. The Courier should write about the excesses in costs of all our roads and schools, look at the cost of private versus government programs and the excessive salaries of some government employees. Spend your time helping all of Kentucky be a better place by giving the good of Kentucky at least equal billing. Recognize injustice caused by both parties. That will give you something to do with your time for the rest of your life. Or is the only course of action left open to us to vote Republican in order to get a fair share of spending in our area?

Take a look at the cities of Tennessee to our south. They have ten times the large cities as Kentucky and from one end to the other Tennessee has interstates and highways that connect and create a great transportation network.

When the Cumberland Parkway, and yes, even the Bluegrass Parkway were first built, you could drive sometimes for miles and not meet a vehicle, but both superroads now carry a increasingly greater traffic.

The Heartland Parkway would make more sense to me than even Interstate 66, because it would connect more traffic directly in a shorter distance to save hours and miles of driving. Interstate 66 would take years to build because the route goes east/west and a longer distance to connect. It would bring prosperity to a strip of Kentucky in the middle of the state that ain’t seen the Great Lawn of Louisville. We won’t have to tear down old buildings to build new ones, because we don’t got any. We could all go to Louisville on a tour bus and go downtown and be awed by the big city, but of course we would need The Courier to direct us, because we ain’t smart and educated like you’uns. I added the dialect because you, the great CJ like to condescendingly portray rural Kentucky as backwards and slow in so many of your articles. All the while trying to appear altruistic—a perverse bit of sanctimony, if you ask me.

But we may not be so backward as you want to think. This Route Interstate 66 has more colleges on or close to it than you have in Louisville, when you add the medical school and college at Pikeville, Alice Lloyd College, Hazard Community College, University of the Cumberlands, Somerset Comm-unity College at London, Somerset, and Russell Springs; Lindsey Wilson College, Campbellsville University, Western Kentucky University at Glasgow and Bowling Green, Hopkinsville Community College, Murray State, and Paducah Community College, and Mid-Continent University.

Interstate 66 will be a boon to all of them, to all of us, and, in the end, to all of Kentucky.

Get a life, Courier-Journal!

We have one here and it’s pretty good!

        

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