Just wondering who is paying for the St. Croix River bridge

[Drewcifer]

This bridge also costs nearly as much as the proposed Vikings stadium (70%).

[Clifford63]

When it was stated direct cost to MN is $150 million, that is probably not far off. Wisconsin is adding close to that and Fed is also adding a bunch of money. Low end of the total cost is somewhere north of 500M.

I love how people seem to think funding should be based on probability of them actually using it. I will not be going to any vikings game, using the trains, or that new bridge. It is just not possible that every project will be about my needs, but it should be possible to do all projects with an eye towards keeping costs down to reasonable levels. If it were up to me, I might take all the money on the table for these big projects and use it for more practical things or gasp reduce the amount of money we spend.

Current stadium proposal calls for 300+ million from the state and this bridge is calling for around 150+ million from the state. Put into perspective that is about $100 or so per person in the state of MN. Translate to those that actually pay taxes and it might be more like $500 per head. Not a crazy amount of money, but it is significant in terms of what else could be done with that amount of money.

[Mdcastle]

While we're questioning government spending, I'd like to throw out the Silverdale Bridge project, where we paid $6,000,000 to replace a bridge 65 vehicles a day use. You might question subsidizing people living in the exurbs and people with cabins (and to me that fact that it's Wisconsin is not relevant), but subsidizing people living in extremely rural areas could also be questioned. Like the Stillwater bridge, a substantial amount of money was spent preserving the old structure, if you want to see it coincidently it's near Stillwater now, a bicycle bridge over Manning Ave. In terms of dollars per vehicle, Silverdale is roughly twice as expensive as Stillwater.

As for the Vikings stadium, I support both the bridge and the stadium, but since no one who supports the bridge but not the stadium has commented I will. It's easy to see what's wrong with the Stillwater bridge if you're stuck in traffic or just trying to enjoy downtown Stillwater as a pedestrian; by contrast the Metrodome isn't a bad fan experience. The reality of football economics is a lot more esoteric than a traffic jam to the average person; people see how a new bridge would benefit themselves, but see the football stadium as benefiting Zigi. It could also be some of the "ME! ME! ME! Whatever doesn't benefit ME personally isn't worth spending money on" attitude the previous poster alluded to also, maybe these are people that live in Stillwater or St. Croix County but never attend or watch Vikings games.