Let’s get our priorities straight

By Liam Day
April 12th, 2008

The lead in today’s Globe says everything that needs to be said about our skewed expectations of government. The article amounts to little more than hand-wringing that the Big Dig tunnels have yet to be wired for cell phone reception.

The money quote, though, comes from a Scituate man who flies in and out of Logan two or three times a week and expresses his frustration that he is forced to use South Boston roads instead of the Big Dig tunnel to connect to I-93 so that he can call his family and tell them he’s landed safely. Why he simply can’t call them walking from the arrival gate to his car, I don’t know, but he is right about one thing:

It sounds like it’s just not a priority for somebody.

With the state facing a possible $17 billion maintenance backlog, the T carrying roughly $8 billion in debt and the Governor proposing a bond restructuring plan that proposes to free up $3.8 billion in capital spending over the next eight years to fix more than 400 structurally deficient bridges and another 400 that soon will be if they aren’t fixed, I sure hope nobody is making it a priority to wire the Big Dig tunnels for cell phone service.

Let’s keep our eyes on the ball, people. We can’t have everything we want. Call me crazy, but I’ll take safe bridges over cell service any day.