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 Editorials | Issues | March 2007 
Turning I-69 into NAFTA Superhighway Spurs Criticism
 Mike Connell - Times Herald
| | Tractor-trailers often line up for entry at the customs plaza into the United States at Port Huron where I-69 begins, or ends. Plans are in place for a superhighway, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon. |
Not so long ago, The Hoosier Gazette reported that an Indiana congressman planned to introduce legislation to change the name of Interstate 69 to a number that didn't, um, smack of indecency.
The Rep. John Hostettler, a conservative Republican whose district borders the Ohio River, strongly supported plans to extend the expressway from Indianapolis to Evansville. In fact, he supposedly wore a "kI-69" button on his lapel.
"Teenagers point and snicker at it," the Gazette quoted him as saying. "I have had many ask me if they can have my button. I believe it is time to change the name of the highway. It is the moral thing to do."
He suggested 63 would be more appropriate.
It's one of those stories that make you sigh and say, "That can't be true."
And, of course, it wasn't.
The Hoosier Gazette is a humor Web site that specializes in satire, gags and pranks. Its writers made the whole thing up, then sat back and chortled when the story trickled into the media mainstream.
Though the Hostettler story is fiction, there are any number of people who would like to blot out I-69.
Their concern isn't the number but the road itself. Congress and the Bush administration are forging ahead with plans to turn I-69 - the so-called NAFTA Superhighway - into the main road between the political, commercial and population centers of Canada and Mexico.
Criticism of I-69 comes in two main forms:
Conspiracy theorists who see it as part of a Trilateral Commission plot to merge Canada, Mexico and the United States into a single government, the good old United States of North America.
Anti-globalists, such as Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan, who see it as a threat to the American working class. They believe money-grabbing globalists intend to slash costs and raise profits by replacing relatively well-paid American truckers and port workers with poorly paid Mexicans.
Last summer, Buchanan wrote an essay about what he called the "Fox-Bush Autobahn," a reference to former Mexican leader Vicente Fox and the latest member of the Bush-Clinton Dynasty to serve in the White House.
"Container ships from China would unload at Lazaro Cardenas, a port named for the Mexican president who nationalized all U.S. oil companies in 1938," Buchanan wrote. "From there, trucks with Mexican drivers would run fast lines into the United States ... (and) fan out across America or roll on into Canada."
Extending I-69 from Canada to Mexico has vocal critics, but they are vastly outnumbered by influential supporters.
Tom DeLay, the former House speaker, led the I-69 Congressional Caucus before leaving office. He once described the NAFTA Superhighway "as one of the smartest, most common-sense things we can do. Congress recognizes this and the fact that I-69 has significant potential to create jobs and stimulate trade and investment along the entire 1,800-mile corridor."
Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader, predicts the superhighway could become "the Erie Canal of the new economic era."
At the risk of sounding cynical, I suspect pols such as DeLay and Lott are concerned less about global trade than how a new highway would please the folks back home.
It probably says something that the first piece of I-69 to open outside of Michigan and Indiana - 12 miles of expressway in northwest Mississippi - provides access to the casinos at Tunica.
Interstate 69 begins - or ends, if you prefer - at the Blue Water Bridge. Between Port Huron and Lansing, it's designated an east-west road. Beyond Lansing, it becomes a north-south route, as is traditional for odd-numbered interstates.
The expressway, which runs for 201 miles in Michigan, now ends (or begins) in Indianapolis. Eventually, the road will cross Indiana from northeast to southwest, connecting Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Bloomington and Evansville.
I-69's proposed route will carry it across the western tips of Kentucky and Tennessee. It is to skirt Memphis and cross the mighty Mississippi on the proposed Great River Bridge, a $565 million, 4.25-mile span between Rosedale, Miss., and McGehee, Ark.
El Dorado, Ark., Shreveport, La., and Nagodoches, Texas, are other communities on the proposed road, which would parallel U.S. 59 in east Texas. The expressway would pass through Houston and Victoria, where it would split into three branches running to the Mexican border at Brownsville, McAllen and Laredo.
Once finished - something unlikely to happen in the next 20 years - the drive from Port Huron to Brownsville would be 1,695 miles, shaving 130 miles off existing routes.
What the NAFTA Superhighway eventually will mean for Port Huron is anyone's guess.
Part of me suspects it will make the drive to Bloomington easier, if I ever find a reason to drive to Bloomington, and not much more.
At the other extreme, Port Huron and Sarnia could emerge as gateway cities on one of the continent's most vital trade corridors.
How it plays out depends on what happens at the border.
In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement was going to "thin" the border. It was a triumph of globalism, of breaking down international barriers.
Fears raised by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have caused our borders to "thicken." If you're planning a weekend in Toronto, or if you wish to cut across southern Ontario on your way to Niagara Falls or Boston, the border has become something to dread. You're never quite sure what hassles to expect.
Those two factors - the "thinning" of free trade and the "thickening" of border security - are at war with each other. And it's not a conflict that's likely to end anytime soon.
Mike Connell is a columnist for the Times Herald. He can be reached at (810) 989-6259 or mconnell@gannett.com. |
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