Your Opinion: Accountability on transportation needed

Dear Editor:

Well, it certainly didn't take long for our states' elected and transportation officials to start with the typical, "We're doomed, the sky is falling" nonsense because the voters saw through the blatant insult on their intelligence with Missouri Amendment 7.

Let's see what they have already wasted our road money on. Electronic message boards that tell you how long it's going to take to get to the next exit! What's that improve? Doesn't change or improve anything.

They claim Missouri's roads and bridges are crumbling and they fear a rise in fatalities and bridge closings. So let's jog our memories a bit and go back to 2012 and take a look at MoDOT's safe and sound bridge improvement program. In that program, Missouri spent over $600 million to repair and replace more than 800 bridges in Missouri.

Then let's go back to 2007 and the Missouri smooth roads initiative in which thousands of lane miles were done using billions of dollars in bond postings over the last 10 years. And finally, two recent surveys by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Reason Foundation that ranked Missouri's roads seventh and eighth best in the nation, respectively.

So, gentlemen and ladies in our Capitol building, we're not mean-spirited people against sound safe roads. We're just in need of a better story with truth and accountability. Not a big mess of falsehood.