PLN #5

For my 5th PLN entry i read an article called "Bridge to Nowhere" by Ted Stevens. Recently in
ketchican, an Alaskan south-eastern island to Alaska and it's main airport. The bridge was estimated to cost somewhere around four hundred million dollars but Friday it was announced the project was three hundred and twenty nine million dollars short of funding. The republic governor said that Alaska will continue to look for more options but that they won't be anywhere close to a 400 million dollar budget. Some say that the best option is to continuesly upgrade their ferry system that takes fifteen minuets to get to on the ferries. The town the bridge would connect to was called Gravina which is seven blocks wide and eight miles long and has a population of fifty and researchers say the bridge is needed for the economical and town growth. What matters from this is that we quit half way through the project and it doesn't sound like they were very prepared financially wise or economically wise and if the bridge is going to built we need to be 100% on the project and really go for it. It relates to me because I've actually been on an Alaskan cruise in which we stopped in several Alaskan towns including ketchican where we zip lined and went on a whale watch on the exact same place that they tried to build the bridge. While whale watching one of the crew members talked about how they were trying to get a bridge built and even said that in support of building the bridge one man swam the whole length which took him about 2 weeks to complete.