USA Today thinks the federal government needs to spend more on infrastructure. An opposing view suggests that most of any spending increases would go for unnecessary new projects, not for repair of existing infrastructure.
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The Antiplanner wrote:
Certainly, something must be done about the impasse over the federal transportation bill. But increased spending isn’t necessarily the solution; we first need to make sure that the money that is being spent is going to the right places.
Repairs and upkeep should have an absolute first call on transportation tax dollars (mostly motor fuel taxes and other highway user revenues).
In most states, it is interesting to note that toll roads generally do not have nearly as much of a problem with deferred maintenance.
The process of diverting dollars from one mode of transportation to another should be much more transparent than it is today. Regardless of what people might think about the New York MTA (which runs subways and buses and trains in New York City and some of its suburbs), they do state pretty clearly on their Web site that they divert a lot of toll dollars to transit subsidies.
Perhaps Congress should establish a test in federal transportation law which denies New Starts funding to metropolitan areas that have maintenance backlogs over a certain limit?
In more than a few states, there is some variation of this codified into law, but it seems not to apply to public transportation (for reasons not clear to me).
Randal O’Toole wrote in USA Today:
This is because politicians prefer ribbons, not brooms. Ribbon-cutting projects provide more photo opportunities than do ongoing maintenance projects. And politicians make matters worse by favoring big, glitzy new projects over low-key ones that can do more at a far lower cost.
Agreed. And those same politicians are often guilty of assuming that various public transportation projects will provide highway congestion relief, something that transit is usually not capable of doing, even with gargantuan amounts of taxpayer money.
For example, the Boston and Washington rail transit systems are rapidly deteriorating, with sometimes deadly consequences. Yet rather than rehabilitate these systems, politicians are building new rail lines that transit agencies can’t afford to maintain.
No dispute. I suppose that the politicians know that they will likely be out of office when the bill comes due for repairing and rehabbing the (new) train lines that they advocated for and approved.
Because so much of that gritty repair and rehabilitation work takes place out of sight of the public, it may be hard to convince taxpayers that such work has to come before that spiffy new train line that always seems to have one or more groups of people advocating in favor of.
“Perhaps Congress should establish a test in federal transportation law which denies New Starts funding to metropolitan areas that have maintenance backlogs over a certain limit?”
A good, simple compromise. In other words, not a chance in hell congress will do it.
There was also this in the Wall Street Journal.
Some quotes:
Amtrak’s deadly derailment last week has again re-awakened concerns that the U.S. spends too little on highways, railroads and other public infrastructure.
Lost in the debate over the quantity of federal investment, however, is an equally pressing problem: the quality of such spending.
Federal infrastructure investment is not directed to the projects with the biggest payoff in productivity, safety or environmental protection. Inadequate funding, badly targeted, is a recipe for undermining the country’s long-term economic potential. Bridges raise productivity; bridges to nowhere don’t.
“Outside of a few very small new programs, it is nobody’s job in Washington to figure out which roads or bridges we should invest in,” says Aaron Klein of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank. “It is a decentralized structure where state and local authorities are highly empowered.”
I think this is an issue that we can all agree on, e.g., maintaining what we have must always come before new infrastructure is added.
This is one reason why I’d rather see the federal dollars now earmarked for California’s current, dubious high speed rail plan be diverted to fixing urgent problems on the Northeast Corridor like the Hudson Tubes or upgrading existing facilities such as the existing San Joaquins passenger rail route, rather than a project like HSR from nowhere to nowhere that doesn’t provide ANY benefits to existing riders, and only to future riders perhaps in 20 years or longer (and the latter assumes they got the other $92 billion to finish the entire project (2015 $$; probably $200 billion+ in year of construction dollars). But I digress.
This is also actually Chuck Marohn’s point at Strong Towns. The Strong Towns central argument is actually that all forms of infrastructure in this country is vastly overextended, not just roads, but water, sewer, and other forms of taxpayer-financed facilities. But for some reason, at least one commenter here complained that Strong Towns was a “hate the suburbs” site. No, just a different take on the fundamental problem of deferred maintenance and the bill coming due for replacement of worn-out infrastructure, most of which was built after World War II. if anything, Marohn and his associates are even more alarmed about the infrastructure deferred maintenance/replacement problem than The Antiplanner, CPZ, etc.
“Perhaps Congress should establish a test in federal transportation law which denies New Starts funding to metropolitan areas that have maintenance backlogs over a certain limit?”
If the (during peak) at capacity Hudson tubes used by Amtrak and NJTransit are falling apart and need to be shut down for maintenance, do they count as part of the maintenance backlog? Does that mean a project to build a new pair of tubes into Penn would be ineligible for funding? So instead of building a new pair of tubes, then shutting down the old ones, then making use of the new capacity they have to shut down the old tubes, cut service drastically, rehab the old tubes and only then build a new pair with federal support?
If the Portland rail system is suffering from a maintenance backlog does that mean that even if a city/county in the metro has been maintaining their infrastructure well they are ineligible for funding? Or what if a metro has mostly kept their infrastructure well maintained, except in one city/county there is a huge backlog, that city/county would be eligible to receive funding for new projects because the metrowide maintenance backlog is small? Should productive places in a metro be forced to subsidize less productive ones enough to eliminate their maintenance backlog before they are eligible for federal support? Who’s to say that investing in those productive places adjacent to unproductive ones wouldn’t offer the best return on investment by whatever metric you prefer?
Any simple system will miss something and open the door for the conniving to take advantage while turning down good projects. Any complicated test allows the scheming politician to rig it from the get go.
@C. P. Zilliacus
Why should repairs and upkeep have first call on transportation dollars? Say you have an overbuilt highway segment that to cover lifecycle costs from gas burned driving on it would need a $5 gas tax. Is that a road that should be repaired and rebuilt? Is it one that should never have been built in the first place? At what point is it wrong to double down on a bad investment? The AP likes to talk about rail lines that he thinks should be replaced with buses instead of doubling down on a bad rail investment, shouldn’t the same standard be applied to bad road projects? Maybe instead of just focusing on intermode subsidization, make sure to take a good hard look at intramode subsidization. If a new construction transportation project required a federal subsidy of $1 per trip should it be turned down in favor of a rehab of an existing transportation facility that will required a federal subsidy of $2 per trip?
ahwr,
If a portion of the service is unproductive and has a huge maintenance backlog maybe that portion should be discontinued. I’m sorry, but agencies need to be held accountable and act like adults. If you can’t take care of the stuff you have you shouldn’t be able to get a bunch of expensive new stuff.
I think the answers to your questions regarding Penn station would be easy to address. It’s not that complex to plan for bringing old line up to snuff or replacing it all together. There is a pretty clear difference between new services and replacement service, at least to me.
If a DOT or transit agency built something twenty years ago that was a costly mistake and bad investment at the behest of a politician now enjoying his pension does that mean that project must be maintained in perpituity? What if the best option is to let it decay over twenty years then once it’s dangerous to continue to use just junk it? During those twenty years does it count towards a maintenance backlog that would forbid financing of new projects in the metro area, no matter how good an investment they are, no natter how good prospects for maintaining them to get the most out of federal dollars would be?
Ahwr,
if you want to make your point, maybe you should let us know about some of these highways that require those kinds of subsidies. As far as I know, the only ones that do are steel rail highways.
http://flatironbike.com/files/2008/07/texasdot_equitygap.pdf
And if you don’t mind reading what you consider a hate site
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2013/11/20/the-bypass-of-commerce.html
“If a DOT or transit agency built something twenty years ago that was a costly mistake and bad investment at the behest of a politician now enjoying his pension does that mean that project must be maintained in perpituity? What if the best option is to let it decay over twenty years then once it’s dangerous to continue to use just junk it? ”
That’s a false dichotomy. There are several more options that might make a lot more sense, particularly from a safety perspective. Again, if it has horrible performance and is the source of the backlog, end it now. Why wait and expose operators and customers to potentially dangerous conditions? You’re muddying up the waters. Let’s not make this more complicated than it needs to be.
Thanks for the links ahwr. TxDOT has been bleeding money for some years now, and it’s not entirely their fault. The conservative politicians in this state have been obsessed with keeping “the rainy day fund” stable and growing. Instead of using gas taxes and other revenues for their intended purpose, in this case maintaining highways, they put the money aside in perpetuity so they can claim the championship of fiscal responsibility. Well, guess what? When TxDOT starts to operate at a deficit I would say “it’s raining.” Luckily voters organized and got rid of the gas tax contribution to the rainy day fund. Now we can spend that money as the good lord intended.
The $25 million highway project for a “bypass” of Nicollet, MN described by the article from the “hate site” linked by ahwr (http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2013/11/20/the-bypass-of-commerce.html), would save less than one minute for 7,000 ADT. On an annual basis, this is a net time savings of 706 hours for drivers per year (e.g., 1 minute X 7,000 ADT = 1.9 hrs/day X 6 = 706 hours/yr. Assuming an interest rate of 3.5% (close to the current federal bond rate), the annual carrying cost of the project would be $1.25 million. This translates to a cost per hour saved of $1,770.54 , or roughly two orders of magnitude than the value received by drivers from the Nicollet bypass project.
Certainly the project will be “safer” but then, Strong Towns also points out that the situation could be fixed by (a) reducing the speed limit; or (b) preferably, fixing the 9 driveway access points and fixing the major intersection in the town along the state highway, probably for a cost of far less than $1 million.
I will start taking The Antiplanner’s and the majority of commenters’ complaints regularly posted here about the alleged inefficiency of rail transit–and bus transit on separated busways, too–when I see complaints about stupid highway projects like the overkill of projects such as the $25 million Nicollet, MN bypass, or much worse, a myriad of unjustified freeway widenings in urban areas that would not be “needed” if some semblance of real road pricing were applied instead.
For $24 million, assuming $1 million to fix the real problems in Nicollet, you could repave 100+ miles of 2-lane Minnesota state highways, or fix dozens of various safety and highway operational issues around the state. However, in Minnesota and every other state, the highway bureaucracies are set up to solve the “big” problems like the Nicollet Bypass and bigger, not to fix the fine-grained details that might actually really benefit the driving public–and sparing the public purse at the same time.
Hahahaha. It’s hard to maintain a straight face as msetty types those fantasies.
I will start taking The Antiplanner’s and the majority of commenters’ complaints regularly posted here about the alleged inefficiency of rail transit
No one wants you to take anything seriously. We just want you to keep your promise and go away to your personal echo chamber, just like you said you would.
would save less than one minute for 7,000 ADT
Well at least it’s only $25 million out of the pockets of those who pay for, and use the roads in the first place. The PMLR light rail line, just as an example, costs $1.5 billion to provide measurably slower transit service than existed in the first place! I can imagine you calling for beheadings if a road project suffered similar defects. Instead, here you are quibbling about pocket change while your buddies at Stacey & Witbeck are robbing the vault and laughing.
when I see complaints about stupid highway projects like the overkill of projects such as the $25 million Nicollet, MN bypass,
While this project may or not be required, it’s hilarious to see you and that blog jumping up and down shaking your fists over $25 million. That would barely be enough to build 500 feet of the PMLR light rail line. Where’s your criticism of that boondoggle? Oh that’s right; it’s rail, therefore its cost and utility are irrelevant.
We are aiming to improve safety by building a new. expensive highway
Again, $25 million is hardly the stuff of budget busters. It wouldn’t build a mile of the cheapest streetcar line currently under construction or being reviewed. Projects which, by the way, would impede traffic and cause a reduction in service overall compared to before.
a myriad of unjustified freeway widenings in urban areas that would not be “needed” if some semblance of real road pricing were applied instead.
Unneeded in whose opinion? Yours? That’s gas tax money going to upgrade and maintain roads, which is what it’s supposed to do. I agree that toll pricing needs to be applied to freeways, but unlike you, I don’t think that’s an excuse to build a 2 lane freeway through San Francisco with $50 tolls, declare victory on congestion, and use the toll money to build boondoggle subway or light rail lines.
The pic of Strongtown’s founder Chuck Marohn looks very much like Lenin’s New Soviet Man.
But CapitalistRoader, how can you possibly argue with the words on the poster, from the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism?
Humane relations and mutual respect between individuals: man is to man a friend, a comrade, and a brother.
People never noticed the asterisk and the disclaimer:
some people, namely those in power and those charged with keeping them in power, are more friends, comrades, and brothers, than others, namely, the ones upon whose back the entire system rides
Pretty liberal use of quotation there.
“Pretty liberal use of quotation there.”
Huh?
Wish the AP hadn’t disabled nested comments.