In 2016, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority planned to spend $250 million on a project that would turn several New York bridges into an intricate light show.
It sounds like a lovely but expensive idea.
Nine years later, the city has spent $108 million on the project, which ultimately failed to materialize.
They spent $300,000 annually over seven years to simply store the lights.
A whole bunch of money down the tubes.
This is the kind of thing that causes people to distrust and despise government, and rightfully so. Wasting enormous sums of money like this is atrocious, and simpleminded people will see this as yet another reason to take an indiscriminate hatchet to government agencies and services.
It’s not, of course. For every act of wasteful stupidity by the government, our world is relentlessly, continually, and indescribably better because of the work that elected officials and government employees do on our behalf.
It’s easy to forget this when you read stories like this. Then you look at the bridges that these lights were supposed to illuminate, and the roads leading to these bridges, and the police and firefighters who use those roads to keep us safe, and the hospitals and schools and military bases and airports and research facilities and libraries and food banks and playgrounds along those roads, and you quickly realize that flashes of wasteful inefficiency like this bridge lighting project pale in comparison to what government does for us on a daily, almost minute by minute basis.
Also, some good news:
The power authority is now selling the lights off, with a minimum bid of $25. So if you’re looking for some new Christmas lights, you might be able to get yourself a serious set of industrial-strength lights for a steal.
