Transportation

How to Pull Congress Away From Pork

Articles — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:45:00 -0400

A consensus is emerging to include billions of dollars for transportation projects in an economic stimulus plan to be taken up shortly after the presidential election.

Infrastructure investments may well be the best short-term stimulus available to policymakers. Supporters tout the two-for-one benefits of fixing crumbling highways and bridges while pumping money and jobs into a sagging economy. And there's no outsourcing a road crew.

However, standing between your state highway department and all those federal infrastructure dollars is something far more dysfunctional than the local traffic grid – Congress's earmark-riddled transportation funding process.

This reality raises the question whether, as we navigate the minefield of economic recovery, we… more

Left and Right Must Join to Fix Infrastructure

Articles — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:14:00 -0400

Let’s stipulate, up front, that there’s plenty of blame to go all around on Katrina.

Two years ago this week, and ever since, a Republican president, a Democratic governor and a Democratic mayor have all seemed to be competing for the prize of "most incompetent." And also, let’s just say it and get it out of the way: During the hurricane and its aftermath, some of the people of New Orleans haven’t acquitted themselves very well, either.

But the real lesson of Katrina is for all of us everywhere: The physical environment matters -- a lot more than we have been willing… more

Government's Attention Span Needs Repair

Articles — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:27:00 -0400

So now they tell us that 73,764 American bridges last year were rated "structurally deficient" -- the same rating as the Interstate 35 bridge that collapsed last week in Minneapolis.

That doesn’t mean all those bridges are deadly dangerous, but it does mean nobody really knows. One might think, after 7,000 years of civilization, that the governing class would have figured out how to keep bridges from killing its citizens, but evidently our betters have had other priorities.

In the meantime, a lot of cheap short-term political points will be scored on this tragedy -- before we get to the long-term reality,… more

Sherle Schwenninger in Roll Call on Public Infrastructure Problems

Communications — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:00:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The collapse of the Minnesota interstate bridge, coupled with the explosion of a steam tunnel in Manhattan, should arouse the country to the need for massive infrastructure investment -- and reform of the way it’s financed.

It’s a miracle that more people weren’t killed and injured in the two instances...

Urgent attention will be paid for a few weeks to America’s highway bridges -- 15 percent to 25 percent of which are believed to be structurally deficient -- because of the collapse in Minneapolis.

But attention ought to be paid in a bigger way to the deficiencies in America’s highways, its electric grid, railways, airports, waterways and urban utilities. They all are clogged, inefficient, a sap on the nation’s productivity and competitiveness -- and, in some cases, dangerous.

What’s needed is bipartisan action...

As part of the New America Foundation’s compelling report “Ten Big Ideas for a New America”... Sherle Schwenninger noted that from 1950 to 1970, the U.S. devoted 3 percent of its gross domestic product to infrastructure but since 1980 has spent less than 2 percent. A percent of GDP amounts to $140 billion a year in current dollars that the U.S. is not spending to keep its economy growing. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates national infrastructure needs double that -- $1.6 trillion over a five-year period.

Schwenninger proposed that the U.S. government needs a capital budget to fund infrastructure rather than relying on separate trust funds and appropriations to pay for various projects...

For the complete article, please visit the Roll Call web site.

Can the Ports Clean the Air Without Choking the Economy?

adminn — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:23:00 -0400

Airing a Pollution Solution for the Ports

Articles — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 20:07:00 -0500

Luis Ceja’s orange Freightliner is rumbling down Ferry Street near the Port of Los Angeles, spewing diesel fumes.

As a tiny, plastic hula girl shimmies on the dashboard, Ceja starts fuming too -- about how hard his job is, about how little he earns and about the fact that he and his fellow truckers can’t bear the burden of improving the air quality here.

"I hate that my truck pollutes," he says. "But I don’t have the money to retrofit it or replace it. If they put the bill on us, it’s just not going to happen."

In the coming weeks, you’re going… more

Get Out of the Way, Drivers

Articles — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 03:22:00 -0500

You might think that holiday shoppers driving on the nation’s highways would have enough to worry about with bad weather and high gas prices. But unless there is a sudden about-face on the part of the Federal Highway Administration, Americans are about to receive an unwelcome gift that, unlike a wrong-color necktie or bad-fitting socks, could literally kill them.

The FHA, which oversees our nation’s highway system, is about to issue a regulation allowing 97-foot-long multi-truck monstrosities to roar up and down our highways. These vehicle combinations, called "saddlemount vehicle transporter combinations," or simply "four-ways," consist of four trucks linked… more

Road Plan is a Dead End

Articles — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 21:30:00 -0500

Imagine that the transportation bond measure on Tuesday’s ballot, Proposition 1B, signifies a return to the golden era of California, when the state’s future was on the drawing board.

This is the dream the measure’s backers, including legislators, local officials and the coterie around Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, would like us to believe. In its endorsement of the proposition, one newspaper crowed that "for the first time in nearly 50 years, California is on the brink of building for the future."

Yet in reality, the proposal offers mere crumbs compared to the scale of effort that can solve California’s transportation problems.… more

Suburbia Will Survive a Gas Crunch

Articles — Sun, 14 May 2006 16:20:01 -0400

Predictions of the demise of suburbia, choked to death by high gasoline prices, may be greatly exaggerated.

Conventional wisdom suggests that high prices at the pump mean less driving and, hence, the withering of far-flung suburbs, whose residents must drive to jobs, shopping and recreation.

For today's warriors in the fight against sprawl, there's a silver lining in this: The soaring price of gas evokes images of a nation retreating back to its urban past, with chastened suburbanites abandoning their SUVs and shopping malls for the comfort of dense cities and mass transit.

Philadelphia Inquirer commentary page editor John Timpane, for… more

Port Controversy Exposes Cold Political Realities

Articles — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The emerging conventional wisdom about Dubai Ports World is that, after a disastrous debut for the proposed deal, President George W. Bush might yet get his way. Meanwhile, the debate should be educational for all Americans -- including Bush.

Last week, W. tried to defend the deal by arguing that the United Arab Emirates, which owns Ports World, deserves to be treated just like the United Kingdom, a laughably historical bit of political correctness. It was thus little surprise that public opinion turned against the deal: Just 17 percent of Americans supported the sale, said the Rasmussen Reports polling… more