Obama: "What do you think a stimulus is?"

Ahhhhhhhhhh, if spending is stimulus, the bridge to nowhere was stimulus too.

Is a 200,000 passenger per year international airport nowhere?

According to the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities, the project's goal was to "provide better service to the airport and allow for development of large tracts of land on the island".

The dreaded and ignored facts:

A ferry runs to the island every 30 minutes during most of the year, except during the May–September peak tourist season, when it runs every 15 minutes. It charges $5 per adult, with free same-day return, and $6 per automobile each way .

According to USA Today, the bridge was to have been nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and taller than the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge would cross the Tongass Narrows, part of Alaska's Inside Passage, so the bridge was designed to be tall enough to accommodate ship traffic, including the Alaska Marine Highway and the cruise ships which frequent Alaskan waters during the summer.

Ketchikan's airport is the second largest in Southeast Alaska, after Juneau International Airport, handling over 200,000 passengers a year, while the ferry shuttled 350,000 people in the same time period. The Golden Gate Bridge carries about 118,000 vehicles each day. The Gravina Island Bridge, commonly referred to as the "Bridge to Nowhere", was a proposed bridge to replace the ferry that currently connects Ketchikan, Alaska to the Gravina Island's 50 residents and the Ketchikan International Airport. The bridge was projected to cost $398 million total, $133 million in federal funds. Members of the Alaskan congressional delegation, particularly Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, were the bridge's biggest advocates in Congress, and helped push for federal funding. The project encountered fierce opposition outside of Alaska as a symbol of pork barrel spending and is labeled as one of the more prominent "bridges to nowhere". As a result, Congress removed the federal earmark for the bridge in 2005.