$1.5 Million Bus Stop

It's got to be the cushiest place in the world to wait for a bus. Outside a museum in sunny Anchorage, Alaska. In a $1.5 millon dollar bus stop.

[This is a typical bus stop, Anytown, USA. How do you spend

$1,500,000

to build something that serves this function?]

It's a pork barrel, pet project Sen Ted Stevens (R-AK) sent home while he was still chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The money is earmarked for a single bus stop -- outside the Anchorage Museum of History and Arts.

Considering that a bus stop with lots of frills costs only $10,000 tops, Anchorage's transportation honcho -- Tom Wilson -- is trying to figure out how to cram that much free money into a single bus stop.

He's already talking about better lighting and seating. Then there's the idea of heated sidewalks to melt all that Alaskan snow. And he's thinking about adding electric signs -- so it looks a bit more like Times Square, maybe. So far he's only come up with how to spend a third of the one-and-a-half million bucks in federal aid for that single bus stop.

And that $500,000 is about 50 times what a top of the line bus stop costs in Anchorage. I'm actually a bit surprised that it costs 10-grand for ANY bus stop. (Baltimore Sun)

[Crossposted at BlogCritics.org]