From USA Today:
WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Stevens, who championed $452 million in federal funding for Alaska’s notorious “bridges to nowhere,” has directed the Navy to build an experimental ferry it once rejected to serve a little-used port in a remote area of his home state.
The high-speed ferry will connect Anchorage to Port MacKenzie in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $84 million. The project follows the same route as one of the two “bridges to nowhere,” which the non-partisan Taxpayers for Common Sense and others spotlighted in 2005 as examples of wasteful projects promoted by members of Congress that benefit few people.
The 3-mile ferry route will turn a 2½-hour drive into a 15-minute trip to Port MacKenzie, which has two businesses that employ about 40 people combined.
