Except that only works if the light rail is going to take people where they would normally use their cars to cross the bridges anyway. The MN light rail project doesn’t go anywhere near this bridge, so the comparison is not a fallacy.
The light rail goes to the Mall of America and the airport, which are prime drivers in that economy, and has increased ridership every year.
Like I posted earlier, 60% of the funding came from the Federal government under mass transit grants, that wouldnt have gone toward any retrofitting of bridges anyway...it would have gone to Phoenix or Tacoma or another light rail project.
In fact, the standards for highway funding now are awarded to projects that encourage carpooling or mass transit use...
The fallacy is that if we spent less money on X we would have spent more money on Y, and if we spent more money on Y it would have prevented a disaster.
Lets use an example. El Spendthrift and his wife buy a big screen TV for the home for $4,000. El Spendthrift and his wife also have a roof that is near the end of its useful life. The roof leaks and destroys the big screen TV.
For us to say that the spending of the money on the big screen TV cause them not to fix the roof is a logical fallacy.