Comments about ‘Road projects will create 15,000 jobs, Salt Lake Chamber says’

Isn't that only about $87 per person employed. The math is a little fuzzy on this one. Can someone help me?

I guess the only people in need of jobs are those in the road construction industry?

We all know these public projects are loaded with pork and waste. How else do you drive down the road and see 6 guys standing around leaning on shovels while the least senior guy does the digging.

Bravo!! Bravo!!

I always wanted to stand on the side of the road and hold a flag--no we can all have a chance at it with 15000 new jobs!!

The projects will cost 1.3 million or is it supposed to be 1.3 billion?

Is 1.3 Million going to create 15,000 jobs? Possibly 1.3 Billion.

I BELIEVE IT IS $1.3 BILLION there is no wat $1.3 million will do that. I call it a state bail out the gov want to reward those who helped him keep his job. One day he will be Sen. Huntsman. I would put money on that.

What happens to the jobs and the people when projects are done?

will government just crrate a new project?

and how long can that go on?

Someone once pointed out to UDOT that an inventor had come up with an invention that would save UDOT thousands of dollars per year. When asked about the invention the reply was: "Someone had invented as shovel that would stand up by itself."

So--we are going to layoff thousands of good, hard working state workers.

Then, we will replace them with 15,000 high school drop outs who will stand around in groups of six (wearing their wife-beater shirts and with a smoke in one hand and a beer in the other) "supervising" the undocumented worker who is actually doing some road work.

Brilliant idea

Why are they "standing in groups of six"? Or do you mean to say, that you believe all road construction workers are worthless and don't contribute to the economy? What do YOU do for the state, besides complain?

To: Reply

You don't get out much do you? EVERY construction crew I see (road, home, etc.) is just standing around (usually in groups of five or six) watching while one guy does all the work. I'm NOT complaining--I'm OBSERVING.

As far as construction workers and their contributions to society: They DO seem to buy a lot of beer and cigarettes so I guess that is a good thing because we will all benefit from the taxes and their early deaths. Maybe if they raise the tax on smokes this really will be a brilliant idea!

Thanks for your post. You changed my mind!

Since all I hear are complaints and criticism for every single proposed solution I'm open to a SOLUTION!!!
True infrastructure projects benefit everyone for a very long time. What would this country be like if we did not have the Interstate Freeway system. Put the money into roads, bridges, high speed rail system, ports etc.. Multiplier effect will benefit many right now and everyone for a long time.

The new roads might as well be pyramids in the west desert. In case no one has noticed, the US is in it's third year of declining vehicle miles traveled. We peaked at just over 3 trillion VMT in 2005 and 2006. We will never achieve that figure again.
During this period of declining oil use and the resulting lower prices, the giant infrastructure investments that gave us whatever faint hope of having adequate fuel supply in the future have all been drying up. Meanwhile depletion of our existing developed sources continues at it's relentless pace.
When the economy tries to make a comeback with it's necessary increase in oil consumption, it will become painfully obvious that we have reached our historical limits of production and that hydrocarbon fueled transportation growth is over.
IOW, any new traffic capacity we build from now on will be a complete total waste of money. We will howeve need to use our existing roads and bridges for quite a while yet and we should focus our resources on maintaing those.

I will be one of the guys involved on one of these road projects. One point the planning on these projects has occurred as far as 5 years or more back. Once the engineers plans and permits were approved the money was allocated from the state back many many months ago before the economy was sinking. We were about to start the job in december when they put us on pause pending cancelling the funding. They just didn't pull this road work out of there pocket over night.

I've leaned on a shovel but lets put it in perspective. For example the state estimates a project will cost 20 million. They put it out to be bid on so whoever is awarded the contract must complete it in under $20 million. These jobs are not time and material. That guy leaning on the shovel is production loss to the company completing the contract. The tax payers are not hurt buy the guy leaning on the shovel the company is hurt by it in there overhead and production costs. Companies are awarded jobs by there safety record, production speed record, and quality in most cases.