HIGHWAY PLAN SHORTFALL UNDERSCORES DANGER OF PROJECTIONS

Less than five years through its troubled life, the Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission has formally decided to scrap the ambitious 15-year plan announced with great expectations back in 1992. Given the flawed assumptions on which it was based, there probably wasn't any alternative. The commission's staff originally failed to account for inflation in its projections -- an embarrassing error of, frankly, astonishing proportions. The embarrassment had already cost the commission the services of one chief engineer, who took early retirement, and the negative fallout may not yet be over.

In announcing this climb-down, the commission declared its renewed commitment to complete the road and bridge projects it had committed to through 1999, but to abandon anything planned beyond that. This means, then, that less pressing projects such as the proposed Oak Ridge intersection at Interstate 55 and Highway E are shelved indefinitely. Even further behind will be projects such as the proposed Jackson I-55 interchange at its intersection with an extension of East Main Street. But then, according to Jackson City Manager Steve Wilson, East Main Street is unlikely to be extended out to the interstate for another 10 years, at least.

Commission member Mark Preyer of Kennett, a recent appointee who had no part in the original forecast, issued this cautionary note: "We don't want people to feel the 15-year plan was thrown in the trash bin. There are many good projects we're committed to seeing get done, but we are not identifying them until we know we will be able to do them." Preyer blamed the shortfall on overly optimistic projections about federal funding for road projects, project costs and inflation rates.

Preyer also said it wasn't realistic for any group to predict transportation needs 15 years into the future. This may be the most important lesson of all, with implications that range far beyond highway construction: The notion that smart people working in government can sit down and come up with grandiose "plans" describing the world 10 or 15 years down the road are dubious at best and very possibly dangerous to freedom. This goes for highways just as surely as it goes for what travels under the rubric of education "reform," to re-make the work force of the 21st century, or schemes to re-make the American health-care delivery system.