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At a White House gathering last week, both Barack Obama and Joe Biden warned America’s governors not to squander stimulus funds on ill-conceived infrastructure projects. “Six months from now,” Biden said, “if the verdict on this effort is that we’ve wasted the money, we built things that were unnecessary, or we’ve done things that are legal but make no sense, then, folks, don’t look for any help from the federal government for a long while.”

Nowhere is this warning more pertinent than in building new roads. The stimulus bill allocates nearly $30 billion in highway funds to the states and requires that put the money to use quickly. That’s a good thing when the money is being spent on smart construction, but it raises the danger that some bad projects will be rushed through, simply because the plans are ready to go (in some cases after being controversially fast-tracked by the Bush administration). Misguided road building can encourage sprawl, make communities less livable, and devastate the local environment. We looked at shovel-ready new highway projects across the country that seem likely to get stimulus money and found seven that, in Biden’s words, “make no sense.”

7. I-295 Loop — Fayetteville, NC

In November, North Carolina decided to allocate $275 million to an 8-mile stretch of the I-295 freeway that will eventually belt around Fayetteville, the state’s sixth-largest city. In the state’s preliminary stimulus funding list, the road would get another $63 million for a construction start within the next few months.

But this segment of highway, which runs from I-95 to the army base at Fort Bragg, crosses through rural land and is a recipe for the worst kind of sprawl.

Meanwhile, the city center, deprived of military traffic that currently constitutes its lifeblood, would suffer.

The state already has ample evidence that this road is unnecessary: An existing 7-mile section of I-295, to the east of the extension currently in planning, has attracted few drivers, carrying only 10,000 cars a day, compared to the 100,000 carried by Raleigh’s unfinished outer loop or the 120,000 carried by Charlotte’s. Other state roads would be a much better investment for the limited funds.

So why do it? Former state Transportation Secretary Lyndo Tippett and State Majority Leader Tony Rand are both from Fayetteville and they had unlimited discretion in prioritizing which roads to fund. Importantly, the state has no cost-benefit analysis to determine which roads would make the best investments.

6. I-69 Extension — Indiana

Indiana is in the process of planning the construction of this extension of I-69, which would run from Indianapolis to Evansville, via Bloomington. The I-69 corridor is eventually planned to extend from Canada to Mexico as a “NAFTA” corridor to expand trade.

The new highway – at 142 miles long – would cost an estimated $3.5 billion to build (up from $1.8 billion in 2000). Its effect on the sections south of Bloomington, where it would be built on “new terrain,” would be devastating to the rural life there, with 400 families affected by the route’s construction and 2,800 acres of farmland paved over. More than 1,000 acres of forests would be cut down, including a portion of the Patoka National Wildlife Refuge.

People in Indiana wonder why the road needs to be built. After all, today, roads between Indianapolis and Evansville are rarely crowded. Meanwhile, though the state claims that the new road would reduce travel time between the two cities by 27 minutes, an independent analysis suggests it would only save commuters 10 to 14 minutes.

A better alternative, suggested by community members affected by the project’s construction, would improve existing roads in southwestern Indiana and route I-69 via Terre Haute, instead of Bloomington. Such a path would only be 13 miles longer and cost half as much. That’s because it wouldn’t require constructing a new right-of-way, which means not taking nearly as much private land nor destroying as many environmentally sensitive areas.

5. Widening I-93 — Southern New Hampshire

Southeastern New Hampshire has become a place of residence for commuters working in Boston, many of whom appreciate the state’s scenic beauty and easy drive into Massachusetts. So many people have been making the move, though, that more and more scenic beauty has been consumed by sprawl and the drive’s no longer so easy.

The main access route, I-93, is a mess at rush hour. New Hampshire DOT’s solution: widening the highway from four lanes today to eight along a 20-mile stretch between Salem and Manchester, at a cost of $750 million. The project – now in the implementation phase – has dragged on for decades because the state never fully studied its environmental consequences – which include the loss of some of the state’s remaining wetlands.

More importantly, though, the state didn’t consider what has become common knowledge among transportation experts: building more roads simply encourages more road usage. Nor was a major new transit service considered as an alternative to the project. A parallel existing rail line, which has been disused for years, would offer the area’s commuters a direct shot to downtown Boston. The state has thus far ignored this congestion-relieving option.

In New Hampshire, the highway’s construction would likely mean more suburban home building, more environmental destruction, and increasing pollution. How about trying a new train service instead?

4. I-66 — Kentucky

U.S. Representative Harold Rogers has been relentlessly pursuing the $10 billion extension of Interstate 66 through his state, earmarking more than $90 million for project planning over the last decade. He seems convinced that the freeway would help the economy in struggling southern Kentucky.

Rogers might be well-intentioned, but the project is a disaster. The 420-mile route, connecting Paducah in the west to Pikeville in the east, lies directly between I-64 and I-40, which are only three hours apart. In this rural area, a freeway simply isn’t necessary. There is little traffic on existing roads. More importantly, neighboring states have abandoned work on connecting segments, meaning that the highway would effectively dead-end into local roads at both ends. But the the most dire effects would be on the environment. The road would tear through the Appalachians and the Daniel Boone National Forest, a fact conveniently ignored when the Bush Administration fast-tracked the proposal in 2003.

3. Grand Parkway — Houston, Texas

Houston, it seems, wants to be like Beijing. With six ring roads, the Chinese government has made it clear it doesn’t mind letting sprawl continue without limits around its capital. Houston’s Grand Parkway, at 184 miles in length and a projected cost of $5.1 billion, will be the city’s fourth outer loop.

The next stretch of the road to be built, funded by $181 million of stimulus money, would be a 14-mile corridor running through the traces of Texas’ famous – and now almost completely destroyed – Katy Prairie, as well as a number of other uninhabited areas, including a swath of Lake Houston State Park.

The Grand Parkway Association, the nonprofit group that is pushing the road, has a board made up of major land developers, who see a profitable new frontier for exurban sprawl. One of the project’s biggest boosters is General Growth Properties, which just happens to be developing of a 20,000-home subdivision along the Parkway. (Photo: houstonfreeways.com)

2. Intercounty Connector — Prince Georges and Montgomery counties, Maryland

Former governor Parris Glendening’s assessment that this highway project would be an environmental disaster for the state didn’t prevent the Bush administration from later fast-tracking it.

The Intercounty Connector would stretch 18 miles across the suburban counties and cost up to $3 billion to build by the time it is completed in 2012. Its six to eight lanes would be tolled, but before the revenue starts coming in, the project would consume $2 billion from the state’s reserves and leave Maryland at 93% of its legal debt capacity, making it difficult for it to fund other major projects – like needed new light rail lines in Baltimore.

From the beginning, the Intercounty Connector has infuriated environmental activists. Understandably so, as the chosen alignment would destroy nearly 1,000 acres of forest and induce even more sprawl in the greater D.C. suburbs.

To make matters worse, the project won’t even be much of a help in clearing the traffic on Washington’s infamously congested Beltway. Even though the ICC would be built on average just four miles from that road, its net effect would be to increase the number of miles traveled by Marylanders in their cars, rather than reduce such movement.

Construction has just begun on the project, but there’s still time to shut it down.

1. I-65 Downtown Bridge — Louisville, Kentucky

Kentucky and Indiana have a plan on the books to rebuild the Ohio River crossings in Louisville, where three interstate highways intersect. The Ohio River Bridges would double the span of the existing I-65 bridge and expand the “spaghetti junction” in eastern downtown, where the road meets I-64 and I-71. Several miles upriver, a new East End bridge would allow commuters to bypass downtown Louisville along the newly expanded I-265.

Sounds harmless enough, right? Just the expansion of an existing network of roads and the creation of a new outer loop? The problem is that this $4.1 billion project would create a 24-lane monstrosity along downtown Louisville’s waterfront, further separating the city center from the Ohio river and cutting into a brand new park. Approximately 100 residential properties and 30 businesses would be taken for the project, and the enormous, ugly interchange of the three roads would loom above downtown.

A local group that wants to nix the project as it currently stands, citing its Robert Moses-like scale of destruction and willful disinterest in the healthy function of the city, argues that I-64 should be rerouted around the city via the new East End bridge. This would eliminate any need for an expansion of the downtown span and call for a much smaller interchange. It would open up the downtown waterfront and allow the for the construction of an attractive boulevard like San Francisco’s Embarcadero. Another upshot? This plan would cost half as much.