How to Sensibly Amortize Your Transportation Costs

click on images to enlarge

Yesterday the 2007 GMC Acadia flipped to 165,000 miles on our road trip to the Gulf Coast and back.  That’s a lot of miles on a vehicle that is getting a bit long in the tooth.  Nevertheless, the amortized cost per mile has been quite reasonable by my estimation.  And with fingers crossed won't increase and will hopefully decline.  Current plans are to drive this beast until the wheels fall-off.  Or retirement.  Whichever comes first.  All of which is subject to change at a moment’s notice or on a personal whim.  Bottom line is Jill and I want to make sure we squeeze every last nickle of value out of a depleting asset.

In any event, just about the same time the odometer flipped we crossed this bridge.  The observant reader will notice the dearth of traffic.  We crossed this bridge twice - traveling south and returning north.  And we made the same observation each time.  Wide-open spaces.  For context about this uncongested crossing some background is in order.  

The Ohio River Bridges Project was a transportation project involving the reconstruction of the Kennedy Interchange and the construction of two new Ohio River bridges. The Abraham Lincoln Bridge opened in December of 2015 and is located in downtown Louisville and slightly upstream from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge – completed in 1963 as part of the Interstate 65 project.   This is the Kennedy Bridge on the left and the new Abraham Lincoln Bridge on the right.   

The second bridge – the Lewis and Clark Bridge - opened in December of 2016 connecting Indiana SR 265 and the Kentucky segment of I-265 (via KY-841) between Louisville's East end and Utica, Indiana.  

The Ohio River Bridges project weighed-in at a total cost of $2.6 billion and has been widely criticized for its outrageous expense and for degrading the connection between downtown Louisville and the riverfront.  Both bridges are supported by tolls.  Unfortunately the traffic counts on both are down and nowhere near the traffic projections used to ‘sell’ the project.  It will be interesting to see if future traffic counts rise to a level sufficient to cover the bonding costs of $2,600,000,000.    -Wikipedia

You can learn more about the economics of this issue here.