The Bureaucratic Mind

I guess when you are a bureaucrat whether in Windsor, Ottawa, Toronto, Lansing or Washington you play by your own rules. Those rules, it appears, do not apply to mere mortals. You see, they do not necessarily have to follow the rules of profit and loss and return on investment that would apply in a business transaction that you and I would be involved in, dear reader. When what you are doing is in the public interest, or so you can tell everyone, and you can use taxpayer money rather than your own, it makes life so much easier.

Can you imagine pricing a DRIC Road or a Greenlink Road based on estimates and putting that forward as a price that should be considered if it was your money at risk? Does anyone really know what a new bridge will cost or how much traffic will actually use it? Of course not. That is why the Danish professor was able to write his book on Megaprojects. Here is a short description summarizing part of one of his speeches

• "Truth and lies about megaprojects
  
  In his speech, Bent Flyvbjerg will first argue that a major problem in megaproject policy and planning is the high level of misinformation about costs and benefits that decision makers face in decid­ing whether to build or not, and the high risks such misinformation generates. A consequence of misinformation is massive cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and waste.

How does one explain this story in the Windsor Star, excerpts of which follow:

• "'Our intention is to build this bridge'
  Transport Canada says DRIC's plans to proceed despite Ambassador Bridge
  
  Sean O'Dell of Transport Canada said during Thursday's DRIC announcement for its Windsor-Essex Parkway that DRIC is marching forward with its plans to build a new bridge. A location will be somewhere off Ojibway Parkway.
  
  "The DRIC process was done on assumption the Ambassador Bridge would continue to offer four lanes of service and we were looking to add six to that," he said.
  
  "If we go ahead with ours and they subsequently replace their existing bridge, we go from four to 12 lanes. I don't think that is an excessive amount for long-term growth that we will probably see for the next 40, 50 to 60-year period.
  
  "Our intention is to build this bridge."

Pretty tough talking language isn't it. I bet that it has the Bridge Company people shaking in their boots. Mind you, Mr. O'Dell didn't say that they're actually going to build a bridge but rather that it is their "intention." But let's not quibble.

What bothers me about his remarks is that it seems that the bureaucrats are prepared to move forward on their agenda regardless. As I shall show you, it does not matter if there is traffic that can support a new bridge or not. They're going to build it and thereby cannibalize the traffic from the other crossings putting them into severe financial difficulty. Once that happens the Governments will have to spend even more money to subsidize those crossings or they will go broke and traffic will not be able to use them. I wonder if the bureaucrats have calculated that amount... probably not because that is not in their business model.

You see, just like our legal technocrat Mayor, bureaucrats prepare plans and business models and because they are so smart, smarter than mere citizens, what they say must be true. Therefore it doesn't matter what reality is, it can be ignored.

O'Dell confirmed something that Dan Stamper had been saying before when he said that they went forward on the expectation that the Bridge Company would only offer four lanes of traffic. In other words, the DRIC process really was an insurance policy to ensure that something would happen at this crossing if the Bridge Company chose not to move forward for whatever reason.

Mind you, when a company spends a half a billion dollars over a 10 year period including spending money on the Ambassador Gateway project, a normal person would assume that they are going to move forward with their Enhancement Project.

With all of the cranes working at the end of the bridge on the US side and with I-75 closed down for 18 months do you think someone gets the picture yet?

Here is what I wrote previously on this subject:

• "There is a difference between private enterprise money and Government money. Private enterprise money comes out of the owner’s pocket. Government money comes out of your pocket and mine. A Bureaucrat really has no “ownership” interest in the funds. The Danish professor’s book on Mega-projects gives proof to this as well as the statement above by Minister Caplan.
  
  What was not understood by the Bureaucrats was that the Bridge Co. was NOT going to build a bridge until it made economic sense for them to do so. They do not have the luxury of unlimited taxpayer money. Their decision was that the time is now, not 5 or 10 years ago. Again, I do not believe that anyone believed that they were actually going to do it.
  
  I have heard Dan Stamper say that DRIC was just an insurance policy that would have a possible bridge location determined if the Bridge Co. did not move forward. It should have ended when the Bridge Co. moved on their EA hearings. However, I believe that there was still NO expectation that the Bridge Co. would ever build a bridge. Now that they are really taking action, the Governments are not sure what to do."

When DRIC's own consultant said that the Ambassador Gateway project could process about twice the volume that is at the bridge now and when he also said "Nonetheless, it is believed (by Joe Corradino the US DRIC consultant) that the market won’t support three bridges" one might think that a bureaucrat might pause and consider whether another bridge should be built so that taxpayer money is not wasted.

Not our friend from Ottawa. He wants that bridge built no matter what. As you will remember, the volume of truck traffic was to double by 2030. 2030 is important because that is the maximum time frame of the DRIC study. Well DRIC has been forced to revise that volume down several times. That is the experience at the Blue Water Bridge as well where traffic projections bore no relationship to reality.

US DRIC has effectively admitted that there is not enough traffic at all of the border crossings because in order to make the new bridge financially viable they'll have to take most of the traffic from the Ambassador Bridge, a quarter of the traffic from the Detroit/Windsor Tunnel and a good chunk of the traffic from Sarnia. What is hilarious about all of this is that when the DRIC process started the object of the exercise was to move traffic away from Windsor.

Mr. O'Dell effectively proves the point when he looks at the traffic over the next 40 to 60 years. Now I don't know how good a fortune teller he is but I don't take a great deal of comfort from what he said. Remember that his experts could not predict traffic volumes over a very short term and had to revise their estimates.

If this 40 to 60 year time period is the basis upon which Transport Canada wishes to build their bridge, then Mr. O'Dell made it very easy to set aside the Environmental Assessment. If their mandate was a 30 year time period why is he looking 60 years into the future as justification for spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money. He just made it easy for a number of people to sue the Governments.

The problem I have with Mr. O'Dell and the other brilliant bureaucrats involved in this file is all of the qualifying language that they use. He doesn't "think" that the amount is excessive and that we will "probably" see long-term travel growth over the next 60 years. But what if we don't. What if he is wrong. Everything they've been doing up until now, whether it is based on traffic projections or what the Ambassador Bridge will and will not do, has been wrong.

All that happens then I guess is that the taxpayers are stuck with a huge bill (even if a P3 operator is involved). Huge amounts will be paid out for a bridge that is not necessary, huge amounts will be paid out to subsidize the other crossings.

But how about if you, dear reader, and I have some fun as taxpayers who fund all of the levels of Government. Let us demand accountability from the bureaucrats in the same manner that you and I are accountable at our jobs. Sean O'Dell is Executive Director, Windsor Gateway Project Team. If he is wrong given his position, then let us demand that he suffers the consequences! Let's bring him back to our real world.