To the author’s knowledge, this report is the most comprehensive attempt to date to address public policy related to Michigan’s current transportation infrastructure. More than two dozen specific recommendations are presented to help policymakers fund, reform and prioritize the state’s road network. Every attempt has been made to balance costs and benefits, address long- and short-term needs, and acknowledge the trade-offs inherent to all acts of public policy.
None of the individual recommendations herein is a “silver bullet,” nor is the sum of them one. The recommendations should be considered in their totality and not in isolation from one another.
No one should interpret this report to mean that the author is recommending more spending on roads without spending less on other items both inside and outside of the state transportation budget. Although this report focuses on the transportation and related budgets, the author’s colleagues at the Mackinac Center have recommended hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings from elsewhere in the state budget. Those ideas are a good place to start when determining how the state should raise the priority of its road system without increasing the size of the state budget, or piling new burdens on our already troubled state economy.