The Interstate 11 boondoggle

I don't know why they call the agency the Arizona Department of Transportation. It's the highway department, it's historic name. All it does is plan, build, expand, and maintain highways. No trains – Phoenix is the largest city in North America without intercity passenger rail. No commuter rail or light rail or transit. ADOT is all about highways. Behold its new creation.

Interstate 11 is planned to eventually run from Nogales to Reno, cutting the above swath through hundreds of miles of virgin desert as it winds to the west of Phoenix. I-11 could cost as much as $10 billion to build from Phoenix to Las Vegas alone. But this doesn’t include externalities: Air pollution, emissions that worsen climate change, loss of desert habitat, bladed desert plants, including increasingly vulnerable saguaros.

Kristen Mosbrucker in New Times reported on how the route will benefit Mike Ingram's holdings in Maricopa, as well as Douglas Ranch, acquired for $600 million by the Howard Hughes Corp. with Ingram and Jerry Colangelo as partners. Without freeways, this is worthless empty desert north and west of the White Tanks. With I-11, a goldmine — even though gold mines of the West play out quickly.

We are creating a city of the future," Colangelo, onetime savior of downtown Phoenix said. Here it is:

Hmmm. Curvilinear streets. Dead ends. Wide arterials. Separation of uses. No efficient density. Entirely car-dependent. No light rail. No commuter rail to downtown Phoenix (40 miles east) or anywhere else. As I wrote last month, it looks exactly like the "city" of the past, that is, an agglomeration of single-family, car-dependent tract houses and retail breathlessly called "a master planned community." The sales term makes as much sense as the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman nor an empire.

The Howard Hughes Co. says all the right things on its website about doing the right thing. The U.S. Green Building Council, which certifies LEED buildings, is a partner. How any place can be green that's all cars and a freeway, carved out of virgin desert is beyond me. It has a varied portfolio, including in New York City and Chicago, as well as Houston's suburban Woodlands. But no challenge like Douglas Ranch.

Hughes is committed "to the ideals first expressed by James Rouse over 50 years ago. In founding ... Columbia, Maryland — one of the country's first master planned communities— Rouse imagined a beautiful, self-sustaining "new American City" that fosters economic, racial, and cultural harmony, believing that people are at their best in communities where there is a sense of responsibility to one's city and to one's neighbor."

More than 104,000 people live in Columbia, up from 8,800 in 1970. Rouse poured enormous resources into building it, especially bringing in companies. I was there around 1990 and not impressed — no authenticity, no history, no city vibe. But it was easy to see the appeal. Columbia is 19 miles from Baltimore and separated in every way. This includes no Northeast Corridor or MARC trains. Jane Jacobs would be aghast.

The goal for Douglas Ranch in all its phases is 300,000 people — Buckeye's "planning area" is larger than the Phoenix city limits. Buckeye is less than a city than a collection of real-estate ventures connected by wide highways. It boasts that it intends to surpass Phoenix in population someday.

This will be a neat trick. Buckeye doesn't have the water to keep growing. It largely depends on pumping groundwater, especially for Douglas Ranch. The CAP was supposed to eliminate groundwater loss, but the situation has gotten worse. And this is the official verdict of the state Department of Water Resources, not the looking-the-other-way my sources have revealed.

None of this is stopping the latest Ponzi scheme. The butcher's bill will be high indeed. The United States had an opportunity to build climate-friendly high-speed rail from Phoenix to Las Vegas. Instead, this. I don't have a grand universal walkoff for you. Only, the deathwish of sunny places.

 

 

Comments

[Shaun of the Dead]

Everyone involved in it deserves everything that is going to happen to them. Every means of depriving them of our money, which they have already committed and will come for again looking for MOAR, is justified. This is a zombified society because the zombies are afraid to change, seeing no way that it will benefit them or maintain their position. Instead they seek MOAR of the same, and will have to be dispatched like every other zombie horde.

I note also that I-11 will literally become the northern border of Sonoran Desert National Monument, for some 20-plus miles. At that point, why not just have AZDOT erect a monument of its own alongside - a giant, 666 foot tall Koncrete K*ck of Khrist obelisk, guarded by the Minutemen (of course!), surrounded by US flags, with stadium seating at the bottom for megachurch services and Drumpf rallies? If they are going to waste my money I want a talisman, and the dystopian insult buildings of the starchitects and their planner lackeys aren't doing it for me. Also, we're at the point where we might as well start making it fun for the archeologists of the future.

[Ramjet]

Research who owns the property along the corridor and when they acquired it. It might just look like the CAP from Phoenix to Tucson.

[Wes]

It’s like climate change isn’t happening in Arizona

[Jerome R Petruk]

Looking at ADOT for this monster is aiming too low. This is a Federal Interstate. The ridiculous route, planning, financing, graft, secret land deals, and newly minted millionaires will be dealt with by the Feds. Remember, it's the American West, where in excess of 80% of all land is run from 2000 miles away. You know. Like England ran the original American Colonies? Now D.C. looks a great deal like King George III.

[Rogue Columnist]

Funding is likely mostly coming from the states, which in Arizona would be regressive sales taxes. That's what built and is building the freeways around Phoenix, except for the original Black Canyon and Maricopa.

Barring a few instances where members of Congress used earmarks, the big federal money for the Interstate Highway System petered out around 1969.

[Cal Lash]

I find it difficult to even comment.
It's fucking insane!

[B. Franklin]

Seems like the "master planning" in this case involves buying seemingly worthless desert with the foreknowledge of an unneeded highway being eventually built through it.

Hard to imagine Colangelo being a part of such a massive boondoggle. I always had him pegged for minor larceny. This is a major step up. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

[Ramjet]

See my comments about CAP. It was DeConceni's on it.
JC can smell a buck better than most.

[Cal Lash]

While the Italian mafia is in Arizona its a different gang in charge of Arizona.

[100 Octane]

"Barring a few instances where members of Congress used earmarks, the big federal money for the Interstate Highway System petered out around 1969"

That would help explain why new interstate additions seem to be mostly loops and arterials to feed suburban growth.

"Funding is likely mostly coming from the states"

Would Arizona and Nevada be able to pull this off without Federal funds? I don't think it will happen anytime soon...maybe not at all.

It would be nice to see the "New West" (Denver, SLC, LA, PHX, etc. connected by fast rail, but that most certainly won't happen. Too much cheap air travel, among other things.

[AzRebel]

The rate at which gigantic warehouses are sprouting up in a five mile radius around the intersection of I-10 and the 303 would astound all you old timers.

[Ruben]

The warehouses are not measured in square feet, they're measured in acres.

[Ramjet]

The buildings along 303 by 17 are not warehouses they are manufacturing facilities principally a taiwan semiconductor facility.

[AzRebel]

Ramjet, are your talking about I-10 or I-17?

The ones I am referencing are built or being built but are not occupied yet.

[Mariam Cheshire]

Jon – permission requested to mention another book I wrote in 1972? Delete me if not appropriate.
The purpose is to tell that an Arizona old lady, non-architectual, non-injuneering, non-profit-minding can picture a self-contained city, without cars, built for a purpose. I had a lot of fun drawing it out on paper before writing a word. I even thought that if it caught the attention of someone who could do it – Jerry Colandelo would be nice – my city could bring help to many. I was so absorbed with this idea that the last chapter wrote itself, different than planned, fingers pounding keys, tears on my face.
“The Alternate Safe World of Sanctuary.”
An adventure alternate-history story. It was born to present a solution to social injustices that are prevalent in today’s society. “What if the government programs and the churches and the “good Wills” were not available? Sanctuary, a walled city in the Arizona desert, became the place where anyone could go for help with no questions asked.”
Of course it was just a dream but looking at the Douglas Ranch plan brought it back with the thought “I did better than that.”
I'm enjoying all of the comments. We mostly seem to be thinking alike.

[Cal Lash]

Mariam, Ed Abbey wrote the book about Phoenix. Its called, The Good News."

[Mariam Cheshire]

To Cal and Jon and all: - We do have fun with "What If" stories. Anyone who has read Asimov knows that "what if" often becomes a good reality.

[Cal Lash]

"What if,"
Arizona was a Roadless Wilderness?

[Jeff Johnson]

“What if,” land use planning and urban design were left to professionals, not to archijokes, injuneers, and real estate hucksters?

[Joe Schallan]

An opportune moment, I think, to repost the link to the classic Onion story:

https://www.theonion.com/new-study-finds-most-of-earth-s-landmass-will-be-phoeni-1819579315

[Ramjet]

AZRebel,
I meant I 17, My bad

[M.Moore]

Jon... My question is:who is the hydrologist who will certify that the planned developments have a 100 year water supply? The go to back when I was doing my time in Arizona land biz was Paul Manera - look him up. His fingerprints are all over many,if not most, of the large land developments north of Scottsdale and out Wickenburg way...unless the laws have been changed, that 100 year certification is the key to gaining approval of the proposed developments. Might be fun to see how well his certifications have done after 50 and 40 years of ever higher density straws sucking those underground reservoirs dryer every day...

[Cal Lash]

The Hohokam got it wrong.
The invading terroristic Europeans
got it wrong
The Nomadic Apaches had it down.
Permanent grounded structures are evil.

Whacha think Ruben
Send the white dudes back whence
they came?

[Rogue Columnist]

M.Moore:

The "100 year guaranteed supply" was part of the 1986 water law. The intention was to buy time to wean these developments off groundwater or however else they were meeting the 100-year marker, and get them on Central Arizona Project water.

To be sure, sleight-of-hand was involved. Maybe in 100 years some affordable technological marvel would come along, such as desalination (emphasis affordable). Or the federal government would build a second CAP canal. Or we could get water from the Mississippi. Or...whatever. It was magical thinking.

Consider: Sprawl approved in the late 1980s and early 1990s now has 65-70 years left and the clock is ticking. Meanwhile, groundwater pumping, which the CAP was specifically funded to stop, is worse than ever. More sprawl is being approved. And my sources say the Department of Water Resources is not to be trusted for vigorous enforcement.

In addition, the 1986 law was passed before human-caused climate change was undeniable, settled science, and happening faster than expected. And before too many straws were in the Colorado River.

This is why I call it a Ponzi scheme.

For more on the groundwater situation:

https://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/2020/06/the-groundwater-act.html

[AzRebel]

Please see comment on "Writing off the News" thread.

[Kirk A Dooley]

The "Real Estate Industrial Complex" that has made Phoenix the mess it has been for over 50 years is alive and well.

[John Cote]

I should have been paying attention and am a month late on this I-11 discussion but if it’s not too late, I’d like to get my 2 cents in from a Wickenburg perspective so please consider the following:
APS, (and its parent Pinnacle West), has been inserting itself into Wickenburg’s planning process for the past 2 decades is also one of the driving forces for the “approved” location of I-11. Instead of opposing the western route of I-ll which will, like a Loop 404, forever envelope this once so-called western town within the metro PHX orb, local officials were conned into advocating it while stifling public input.

Maricopa County, in 2012, at a time when huge development proposals previously approved by Buckeye, the sprawl development capitol of the West, were failing miserably, somehow got the votes to approve a new mega development in the Buckeye planning area known as Belmont, to be bisected by none other than the proposed I-11. Interestingly our county supervisor for the district owns lots of acreage in the area currently producing eggs and chicken for regional markets but more interestingly Bill Gates recently purchased the entire proposed development. At the time, the development was hailed as a new city the size of Tempe coming to the west valley. With the recent seeming finalization of the I-11 route, one news article even suggested that the Buckeye area would become another major city rivaling Phoenix for the largest in AZ!!

So what does Wickenburg have to do with this? One similarity is that the major development that has recently morphed this town into sprawl central, aka Wickenburg Ranch, has been funded by mega capital, i.e, the Van Tuhl fortune created by their regional car dealership enterprise being acquired by Warren Buffet leaving the Van Tuhl family with more money than they could possibly know what to do with. The similarity is Bill Gates acquiring the huge Belmont property at the intersection of I-10 and the proposed I-11. Another guy who has amassed so much wealth due to tax cuts over the past decades he can’t even find enough charities worthy of donations. Give him a break though, he’s a computer guy and maybe didn’t realize that a new city 5 miles downwind from a nuclear power plant might not make a lot of real estate sense. Basically, the idea here is that the location of new mega developments, at least in Arizona, is now increasingly out of the hands of the traditional financial institutions that employ professionals to assess the viability of proposed projects as well as far beyond any influence from intelligent planning professionals.

The November announcement of the preferred I-11 corridor was accompanied by a suggestion that Buckeye might someday bypass Phoenix as the largest city in Arizona. Looking at the proposed route, I tend to agree with this profoundly stupid idea. As proposed, the new I-ll looks less like the needed Interstate connection between Phoenix and Las Vegas, but more like a total bypass!

[Reuben]

Coincidently, at the very moment Jon posted this thread, a buddy of mine and his family were parked dead center in the middle of this proposed development west of the White Tanks. They were deer hunting. Will Fish and Game be issuing special tags to allow hunting in the middle of a residential development? After all, the deer and the hunters were there first.

[Cal Lash]

You need a tag to deer hunt in Arizona?
Shades of Curtis Prock, Ken Kholbrecker and the late Shah of Iran.
You misspelt your name, agin.
Ruben, "manunkind" is screwed.
The industrial revolution doomed humans.
in case you havent noticed, human moles are trying to slow down UK forest destruction by that idiot Boris Johnson and his tribe.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/the-eco-protesters-who-live-in-tunnels?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_Control_011322&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tny_daily_recirc&bxid=5bd67d4224c17c104802a222&cndid=48614199&hasha=0523227b7149c0b82cb49b2af58cfdec&hashb=b4d894932a65b44ae2bcace91ea577e9c3a69cdc&hashc=27b2e1888dfb7e258ae5036789675e58bea59212aedaefc767cca4308ce0a752&esrc=article-newsletter