Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee are proposing to increase transportation spending from $305 billion over the last five years to $547 billion over the next five years. Although this is supposed to be a five-year bill, it will really be a six-year bill spending at least $656 billion, as Congress is never able to pass a major bill during an election year and will simply extend it a sixth year at the then-current rate of spending.
Many megaprojects, such as Boston’s Big Dig and Dulles MetroRail (shown here) are built not because they are needed but because politicians can get the federal government to pay for them with “free” money. The proposed transportation bill will encourage more such megaprojects. Photo by Tom Saunders, Virginia Department of Transportation.
The proposed bill would increase spending on highways by 54 percent, double spending on transit, and triple spending on Amtrak. Although transit and Amtrak together carried 1.0 percent of passenger miles before the pandemic and less than 0.6 percent of passenger miles in the last year, the bill would give them 37 percent of the federal funds. Moreover, while federal funding of roads would be hampered by a “fix-it-first” rule, federal spending on transit would have no such limit even though transit infrastructure is in much worse shape than highway infrastructure.
However, premature viagra uk sales ejaculation and lack of erection is due to heavy masturbation or heavy hand practice, which also caused sexual weakness. Taken orally, it can cause a manifold increase in your sexual health gets affected negatively. appalachianmagazine.com purchase generic levitra 5mg cialis tablets Your blood vessels or arteries need to be looked at. The process of erection levitra sale http://appalachianmagazine.com/2019/01/28/clogging-the-ultimate-appalachian-dance/ will be normal after the infection has been eliminated. As the Antiplanner has previously noted, before 2005 Congress restrained itself from spending more out of the Highway Trust Fund than it collected in highway user fees. Now that the gloves are off, Democrats think they can spend as much as they want.
Highway user fees deposited into the Highway Trust Fund totaled about $44.5 billion in 2019, so the existing law required $14.5 billion in deficit spending. Highway user fees in 2020 will probably be about three-quarters of 2019, and are not likely to exceed 2019 levels until 2022 or 2023. Thus, the Democrat’s bill is likely to require around $65 billion in deficit spending per year. In other words, well over half the cost of the bill will be deficit spending, which will be more than four times as much as the previous bill.
As noted in an op-ed in last Saturday’s Orange County Register, funding infrastructure out of taxes or deficit spending rather than user fees is a bad idea for several reasons. First, infrastructure funded out of tax dollars or deficit spending tends to be in worse condition than infrastructure funded out of user fees. Second, most of the taxes to fund transportation infrastructure are regressive yet most of the users tend to have higher incomes.
Third, once infrastructure is funded by “free” federal money rather than hard-earned user fees, transportation agencies start planning expensive bridges to nowhere and other megaprojects. For these and other reasons described in the op-ed, Congress should reject bills that would spend more on transportation than can be collected in transportation user fees.
Private engineering firm could have paid for Bostons Big Dig effortlessly less money than the Government.
People pay little attention to lowtech solutions to problems people spend fortunes and software trying to fix. One of the most low-tech innovations ever the humble bicycle. I’ve recently adopted a bike Now and for little effort get’s me anywhere in a 10 mile radius. We noted the appeal of pedal power. Bicycles themselves are a mature technology with not that much to improve upon. They don’t need rails, overhead lines, traffic management systems, traffic lights, smart grids, smart phone aps, gas stations, batteries or superconductors, charging ports, digital doodads, computerized whatcha callems. They require none of those things, which is why upper establishment types hate them. They represented mobility freedom in the 19th century. Today, Largely invulnerable and independent from Energy prices. But they do need roads, Albeit very little.
As a result of autocentric culture and an American attitude regarding pedestrians and transit users as Losers, riding a bike is dangerous pasttime in transportation corridors; at the very least it’s hazardous and plain suicide at worst. The reason for this is simple: cars rule the roads. It does not matter whether cars drive on gasoline, diesel, batteries, biofuels, hydrogen, or unicorn farts. The assholes behind them have no regard for pedestrians/bikers.
– Cost of sidewalk in NYC installation: 485,000 dollars per mile (10 foot wide and NYC labor costs)
– Cost of typical 3 feet by 3 feet neighborhood sidewalk: $18-22 thousand per mile.
– Cost of paving one mile of two lane road: $1 million.
– Cost of Building one Mile of two lane road: $2-3 Million rural, 5-10 Million Urban.
– Daily US gasoline use: 337 MILLION Gallons per day (at 3 bucks a gallon, Americans spend a Billion dollars a day buying gas)
– Yearly US gasoline use: 123 Billion gallons (Third of a trillion dollars)
– Daily CO2 tonnage: 3.37 million tons
– Annual CO2 tonnage: 1.23 Billion tons per year.
– Cost 100 lane miles of expanded road/highway: over 500-700 Million dollars
Versus
– Cost 100 miles of sidewalk/bike infrastructure: 48.5 million dollars
Net positive side effect of a 1% decline in driving thanks to bike/pedestrian friendly infrastructure,
Saves
– 3.3 million gallons of gasoline
– shaves 33,000 tons co2
– 1000 tons daily of stoich residual hydrocarbon emissions
And with an average price of 3 dollars a gallon; 10 million dollars otherwise spent on gasoline saved that can be invested or better spent on other purchases.
Fahrenheit 451 writer Ray Bradbury wrote a scifi short story “The Pedestrian” a citizen of a television-centered world walks the city’s crumbling sidewalks at night for his amusement. Who’s arrested by A “robotic” Policemen for doing something society abandoned.
Pedestrian culture died in the US because of three factors….
Suburban paranoia: Desire for security/safety they isolated suburban neighborhoods from the streets/roads served solely by them. Suburbs didn’t mitigate crime; infact According to crime statistics, community size makes only a minor difference, though crime rates are higher in urban than in rural/suburban areas. Suburban areas now make up more Arrests.
Shopping mall: Autocentric, though some malls have access beyond cars, they’re not wise or safe access routes. Mall owners don’t care.
Finally…..The Law: The mall looks like public space, but with their private cops and rules about loitering and unaccompanied minors, most shopping centers were never truly open. Strip malls, because they were cheaper to open/run, enforced the same aspect, but despite anti “Loiter” concept, strip malls became havens for sub cultures where loitering is religious fervor…. skaters, punks, rockers, wanna be thugs. But they became havens for crime/decay, strip malls are largely low quality fashion/beauty outlets, chain restaurants and liquor stores. And they were built SO cheaply it was cheaper to demolish than refurbish.
2000’s, strip malls underwent a renaissance, they added better architecture features, buildings that resembled vintage downtown, friendly paraphernalia like banners, streetlamps, bollards, wider sidewalks, shade trees, fountains, benches, outdoor eating so Even people who weren’t shopping could use it. I’ll explain it below…
You can read about it in “From Town Center to Shopping Center:The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America”
When developers and store owners set out to make the shopping center a more perfect downtown, they aimed to exclude from this public space unwanted urban groups such as vagrants, prostitutes, racial minorities, and poor people. Market segmentation became the guiding principle to the entire retail industry for 50 years. That changed with online shopping, todays startup businesses don’t give a shit what you look like because they cant see your face. This forced retailers to reevaluate how they ran their fronts and made businesses that cater/lifestyle services. A busy shopper wants food, rest, pleasant place to sit/eat. Strip malls were ill equipped to provide that and suburban shopping malls could not muster huge foot traffic because they were losing their customer base for sake of convenience to new malls and forms of retail. Smaller, nimbler retailers kept up with the times as national department stores could not.
As the Antiplanner states in prior post
“some people want to believe that the only reason Americans drive is because they are forced to do so.”
Really, What comprehensive infrastructure is built to accommodate people who don’t drive. Since pedestrians don’t exactly pay tolls there’s no incentive for pedestrian infrastructure and conventional sprawl means work/play/dine/education are distinctly separate not just by distance but by infrastructure. For walking is the ultimate “mobile app.” Here are just some of the benefits, physical, cognitive and otherwise, that it bestows: Walking six miles a week was associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s (and I’m not just talking about walking in the “Walk to End Alzheimers”); walking can help improve your child’s academic performance; make you smarter; reduce depression; lower blood pressure; even raise one’s self-esteem.”
The United States walks the least of any industrialized nation. Studies employing pedometers have found that where the average Australian takes 9,700 steps per day (just shy of the supposedly ideal “10,000 steps” plateau, itself the product, ironically, of a Japanese pedometer company’s campaign in the 1960s), the average Japanese 7,200, and the average Swiss 9,700, the average American manages only 5,100. Hence a joke: In America a pedestrian is someone who has just parked their car
People pay little attention to lowtech solutions to problems people spend fortunes and software trying to fix. One of the most low-tech innovations ever the humble bicycle. I’ve recently adopted a bike Now and for little effort get’s me anywhere in a 10 mile radius. We noted the appeal of pedal power. Bicycles themselves are a mature technology with not that much to improve upon. They don’t need rails, overhead lines, traffic management systems, traffic lights, smart grids, smart phone aps, gas stations, batteries or superconductors, charging ports, digital doodads, computerized whatcha callems. They require none of those things, which is why upper establishment types hate them. They represented mobility freedom in the 19th century. Today, Largely invulnerable and independent from Energy prices. But they do need roads, Albeit very little.
As a result of autocentric culture and an American attitude regarding pedestrians and non automotive travel users as Losers, riding a bike is dangerous pasttime in transportation corridors; at the very least it’s hazardous and plain suicide at worst. The reason for this is simple: cars rule the roads. It does not matter whether cars drive on gasoline, diesel, batteries, biofuels, hydrogen, or unicorn farts. The assholes behind them have no regard for pedestrians/bikers.
– Cost of sidewalk in NYC installation: 485,000 dollars per mile (10 foot wide and NYC labor costs)
– Cost of typical 3 feet by 3 feet neighborhood sidewalk: $18-22 thousand per mile.
– Cost of paving one mile of two lane road: $1 million.
– Cost of Building one Mile of two lane road: $2-3 Million rural, 5-10 Million Urban.
– Daily US gasoline use: 337 MILLION Gallons per day (at 3 bucks a gallon, Americans spend a Billion dollars a day buying gas)
– Yearly US gasoline use: 123 Billion gallons (Third of a trillion dollars)
– Daily CO2 tonnage: 3.37 million tons
– Annual CO2 tonnage: 1.23 Billion tons per year.
– Cost 100 lane miles of expanded road/highway: over 500-700 Million dollars
Versus
– Cost 100 miles of sidewalk/bike infrastructure: 48.5 million dollars
Net positive side effect of a 1% decline in driving thanks to bike/pedestrian friendly infrastructure,
Saves
– 3.3 million gallons of gasoline
– shaves 33,000 tons co2
– 1000 tons daily of stoich residual hydrocarbon emissions
And with an average price of 3 dollars a gallon; 10 million dollars otherwise spent on gasoline saved that can be invested or better spent on other purchases.
Fahrenheit 451 writer Ray Bradbury wrote a scifi short story “The Pedestrian” a citizen of a television-centered world walks the city’s crumbling sidewalks at night for his amusement. Who’s arrested by A “robotic” Policemen for doing something society abandoned.
Pedestrian culture died in the US because of three factors….
Suburban paranoia: Desire for security/safety they isolated suburban neighborhoods from the streets/roads served solely by them. Suburbs didn’t mitigate crime; infact According to crime statistics, community size makes only a minor difference, though crime rates are higher in urban than in rural/suburban areas. Suburban areas now make up more Arrests.
Shopping mall: Autocentric, though some malls have access beyond cars, they’re not wise or safe access routes. Mall owners don’t care.
Finally…..The Law: The mall looks like public space, but with their private cops and rules about loitering and unaccompanied minors, most shopping centers were never truly open. Strip malls, because they were cheaper to open/run, enforced the same aspect, but despite anti “Loiter” concept, strip malls became havens for sub cultures where loitering is religious fervor…. skaters, punks, rockers, wanna be thugs. But they became havens for crime/decay, strip malls are largely low quality fashion/beauty outlets, chain restaurants and liquor stores. And they were built SO cheaply it was cheaper to demolish than refurbish.
2000’s, strip malls underwent a renaissance, they added better architecture features, buildings that resembled vintage downtown, friendly paraphernalia like banners, streetlamps, bollards, wider sidewalks, shade trees, fountains, benches, outdoor eating so Even people who weren’t shopping could use it. I’ll explain it below…
You can read about it in “From Town Center to Shopping Center:The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America”
When developers and store owners set out to make the shopping center a more perfect downtown, they aimed to exclude from this public space unwanted urban groups such as vagrants, prostitutes, racial minorities, and poor people. Market segmentation became the guiding principle to the entire retail industry for 50 years. That changed with online shopping, todays startup businesses don’t give a shit what you look like because they cant see your face. This forced retailers to reevaluate how they ran their fronts and made businesses that cater/lifestyle services. A busy shopper wants food, rest, pleasant place to sit/eat. Strip malls were ill equipped to provide that and suburban shopping malls could not muster huge foot traffic because they were losing their customer base for sake of convenience to new malls and forms of retail. Smaller, nimbler retailers kept up with the times as national department stores could not.
As the Antiplanner states in prior post
“some people want to believe that the only reason Americans drive is because they are forced to do so.”
Really, What comprehensive infrastructure is built to accommodate people who don’t drive. Since pedestrians don’t exactly pay tolls there’s no incentive for pedestrian infrastructure and conventional sprawl means work/play/dine/education are distinctly separate not just by distance but by infrastructure. For walking is the ultimate “mobile app.” Here are just some of the benefits, physical, cognitive and otherwise, that it bestows: Walking six miles a week was associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s (and I’m not just talking about walking in the “Walk to End Alzheimers”); walking can help improve your child’s academic performance; make you smarter; reduce depression; lower blood pressure; even raise one’s self-esteem.”
The United States walks the least of any industrialized nation. Studies employing pedometers have found that where the average Australian takes 9,700 steps per day (just shy of the supposedly ideal “10,000 steps” plateau, itself the product, ironically, of a Japanese pedometer company’s campaign in the 1960s), the average Japanese 7,200, and the average Swiss 9,700, the average American manages only 5,100. Hence a joke: In America a pedestrian is someone who has just parked their car
We don’t need a transportation bill. We need to really investigate transportation and supplement LOW cost solutions to problems government exacerbates
The eBike thing could prove to change the bicycle for people. Normal people don’t want to show up at their dinner party nor the grocery sweaty and gross.
Pedestrian culture died in the US because of one factor —> superior transportation paradigm, the automobile.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to fit ‘user fees’ into ‘bicycle’.
In the 1880s they were unable to do so, and the LAW subsequently came up with their Good Roads movement whereby the government would pay for cycle infrastructure. Automobiles came along with their user fee fuel taxes and cycling lost their seat at the infrastructure table.
Starting in 1919, cyclists paid excise tax on tires. An analysis in 1982 revealed the government spent more collecting this tax than it brought in, and it was discontinued.
From obituary in WSJ …
https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazilian-mayor-became-a-global-guru-of-urban-planning-11623247202?st=1jtvhjqc2kulv35&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink