A growing mountain of evidence and analysis

vision for the program, no sense of the spatial patterns of the economy, and decisionmaking still takes place in opaque and unaccountable ways. Moreover, those decisions that are actually open and visible are out of step with national interests. Alaska’s infamous “bridge to nowhere” became a catch phrase for a political and decision making process gone wild. The result is that to many observers, the words “infrastructure” and “pork” are more commonly associated than the words “infrastructure” and “competitiveness.” This section discusses the major existing policy flaws. V. THE POLICY PROBLEM: FEDERAL TRANSPORTATION POLICY IS ABSENT, OUTDATED, AND UNDERPERFORMING