From Archimedes to Sim City

Archimedes, the brilliant Greek engineer, once said, "Give me a platform, and I can move the earth."

More than two millennia later, we can say, "Give me a 3-D printer, and I can create a whole new world."  Sim City is just a game, but it gives us plenty of ideas about how to create new things--and with the advent of 3-D printing, it's easy to see how anyone could be part of this exciting new prospect.

Of course, we would also need to factor in the need for new infrastructure, to accompany this new construction.

Robo-Cars in Sweden "no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo"

Wired reports: 

Volvo is bring its robo-car army to its home country of Sweden, with 100 autonomous vehicles taking to the roads of Gothenburg in the next three years.

In a move that one-ups Nissan’s promise to bring autonomous vehicles to market by the end of the decade, Volvo says it believes that “that no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo car by 2020.”

Michio Kaku, writing for The New York Times: 

As transportation is digitized in the next decade, driverless cars, guided by GPS and radar, will share our highways. “Traffic accidents” and “traffic jams” will become archaic terms. Thousands of lives will be saved every year.

Ray LaHood: Transportation Stimulus Should Have Been Bigger

The Washington Times reports:

Mr. Lahood, who led the Department of Transportation from 2009 until 2013, said that the $831 billion stimulus package that President Obama signed in 2009 should have included more money for transportation projects.

“Should it have been more money? Of course,” he said. “Rather than $48 billion, it should have been $480 billion.”

New Airport Terminal in Shenzen, China

CNN has the story. 

CNN Reports: From Africa to India to China, new infrastructure projects

Guess what country is not represented on this roster?   You got it--right here. 

Wall Street Journal headline: "A Slowdown on the Road to Recovery Decaying Bridges, Highways Raise Costs for Truckers, Manufacturers"

As The Wall Street Journal reports,  "One in nine of the country's 607,380 bridges is structurally deficient and 42% of the country's major urban highways are congested, according to an American Society of Civil Engineers estimate, the result of years of inadequate funding and deferred maintenance."

Those numbers might seem like abstractions, but the chart above shows how slow things can get; in "freight-significant" highways in the Chicago area, for example, average speeds at peak periods are around 22 mph.

And so, as the Journal's Bob Tita notes, decaying infrastructure has real-world, bottom-line, consequences for American business and the American economy: 

Trucks ship the bulk of the country's goods. But trucking companies and their customers complain those shipments are being rerouted—sometimes by hundreds of miles—or traveling at lower speeds over deteriorating or traffic-clogged highways. That causes higher costs for fuel, maintenance and other expenses, including drivers.

In some cases, the higher transportation costs end up on consumers. "We try to price our products to what our costs are," said Donald Maier, senior vice president of global operations for Lancaster, Pa.-based Armstrong World Industries, Inc., which makes floor and ceiling tiles.

He said fully loaded truck trailers traveling to or from its Marietta, Pa., ceiling tile plant will have to use a 25-mile detour, mostly to avoid a two-lane state highway bridge over a tributary of the Susquehanna River that will no longer be rated to accommodate fully loaded heavy-duty trucks.

Armstrong projects the additional miles will add about $200,000 to $300,000 a year to the Marietta plant's transportation costs.

The Journal report continues:

The U.S. hasn't raised the federal fuel tax for 20 years and many states also have been reluctant to raise taxes on fuel or vehicle registration fees, prompting drastic tactics to manage stretched funds.

"One thing we don't factor in our investments is a decline in state-owned transportation infrastructure, but it could become a huge issue," said Dave Strobel, senior vice president of global operations for Carpenter Technology Corp., a Wyomissing, Pa., maker of alloys and metals for aerospace, energy and medical industries.

The company has six plants spread across Pennsylvania, where one in four bridges is structurally deficient—the highest in the nation. The state Department of Transportation recently lowered weight limits on more than 1,000 bridges dotting the state to reduce wear and extend their service. As a result those bridges could be off-limits to big trucks and trailers.

Mr. Strobel is concerned the restrictions will result in circuitous routes and make it more difficult and expensive to directly transport ingots from a plant in Reading and another recently acquired near Latrobe, Pa., to a new mill in Alabama.

This important news story ought to be worth a Wall Street Journal editorial, too. 

A look at crumbling--literally, crumbling--infrastructure in Pittsburgh

The Business Insider has more, courtesy of Transportation for America. 

The newest frontier of infrastructure could be underground

If one takes the broadest definition of infrastructure--that is, "infrastructure is that which helps people do what they want to do"--then pneumatic tubes, snaking underground, for disposing of trash should be considered as infrastructure.  

Overall traffic fatalities are down, but bicycle fatalities are up--so what to do?

As the above chart, from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, shows us, overall traffic fatalities are declining, while deaths among bicyclists (referred to as "pedalcyclists") are rising.  

This increase in bike fatalities, while lamentable, is not surprising, given the proliferation of bicycles over the last few years.  

Just over the weekend, we learned that Montgomery County, MD (population, 989,000), is joining in the Capital Bikeshare program, one of many such bike-riding programs popping up around the country. Such programs are obviously popular, but it's quite possible that they will lead to more bicycle fatalities. 

As anyone observing the streets of big cities today--on foot, on a bike or motorbike, or in a four-wheeled vehicle--the transportation situation is getting more and more complicated, and dangerous. 

So what are some solutions?  How can new thinking help?  What new infrastructure, for example, do we need?  

Celebrating the pro-car, pro-infrastructure vision of Norman Bel Geddes--and noting a future anniversary of that vision

As The Wall Street Journal's Dan Neil observes, driverless cars are on their way--in fact, they are already here.  Still, the issues and questions surrounding them are manifold; including, as Neil puts it, not just the risk of hackers and terrorism and trial lawyers but also the risk of another Skynet.

But there's an upside, of course--and an inevitability.

In addition, Neil adds some useful historical context:

The idea of self-piloting cars has been around a long time, but the vision belongs to Norman Bel Geddes, the American utopianist who designed General Motors' Futurama exhibit for the '39 World's Fair in New York. In the future city (as per Bel Geddes' sprawling set piece of miniatures), cars would move in tight squadrons safely under the control of a central traffic authority. They would be in constant radio contact with each other and the road. They would be electronically crash-proofed in a way that rules out random collisions. Speeds could rise, proximities close and road carrying capacities increase.

A beautiful order would be imposed on interurban traffic, and the cascading efficiencies would include a smaller infrastructural footprint, lower per-mile energy costs and higher system productivity (this vision being from the 1930s, the era of scientific management).

As of 2013, almost everything technically necessary to enact a real-world version of the Bel Geddes dream has been invented. But the details are shaping up differently. For this first generation of autonomy, for example, cars will rely on their own wits—their own cameras, sensors and map-keeping—rather than cede control to some master computer.

As noted here at Hamilton21 in the past, the 75th anniversary of the New York World's Fair is coming up soon--on April 30, 2014, to be exact.  That's a date on the calendar with circling. 

Rep. John Delaney, Democrat of Maryland, on infrastructure

Read about it here.

In particular, Delaney's ideas on infrastructure bonds are worth noting.

"To the future" -- News story from ARTBA convention in Milwaukee

Here's the link to Allen Zeyher's insightful report, for Roads & Bridges, on my speech to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association last week. 

Tony Abbott aims "to be an infrastructure prime minister who puts puts bulldozers on the ground and cranes in the skies."

From a September 7 report in The Guardian. 

Victorious Australian Conservative Tony Abbott ran on four issues, one of which was infrastructure.

Tim Montgomerie of The Times of London spells it out:

3. His four-fold message has focused on immigration, tax, infrastructure and above all, the carbon tax: Most politicians get bored with repeating the same message. Pundits needing to fill their pages or broadcast slots with ‘new news’ certainly do. Abbott doesn’t get bored. A man famous for his physical fitness he has the stamina to conquer arduous bike journeys and marathons. Knowing that voters only start to hear a message when politicians are sick to death of hearing themselves repeat it for the squillionth time he has stuck relentlessly to four big themes: Scrap the carbon tax; Stop the boats (via which illegal immigrants enter Australia); Cut taxes; and, more recently, Build new roads.

"Computer-Operated Car Transports PA Congressman" -- Good for Bill Shuster!

The AP's Kevin Burgos has the details. 

"Russian rocket engine export ban could halt US space program"

Per this report from the Russian RT, the US might have to rethink its policy of relying on rivals/enemies for vital strategic materiel.

There's great wisdom in ensuring domestic manufacturing capacity, to safeguard against exactly these kinds of threats. 

A word from Raymond C. Ventrone, business manager of Boilermakers Local 154, in Banksville, Pennsylvania

Full text of his letter to the editor here.

And this was interesting, too--it's behind a paywall, but one can get the idea:

The U.S government’s Office of Surface Mining has announced that it lost 18,000 documents sought by coal miners as part of a suit to block new federal restrictions on mining. Environment and Energy has the story (subscription only).

Is the US ready for the next generation of supertankers? Short answer: No. And where does that leave us in international competition? Behind.

World's largest ship--cool.   It can carry 36,000 automobiles, 182 million iPads, etc.

But look closer at the graphic above"

So the Maersk Triple E is too big for either the Panama Canal or any US port.  In other words, it can serve five ports in Europe, four in China (including Hong Kong), and two in South Korea.  But not the US.  This is how you lose the battle of international economic--and perhaps strategic--competition.  

If there was ever an issue that leaders of both parties ought to be able to agree upon, it's rebuilding American infrastructure so that we can enjoy continued prosperity all through the 21st century.   

Better Infrastructure Means Saving Lives

A British tourist lost a leg in New York City today when she was hit by a cab that was apparently trying to avoid--or maybe not avoid--a bicyclist on Sixth Avenue.  The New York Daily News has the details, which, of course, will now be sorted out in court.

In the meantime, it's clear that as bicycles play a larger role in America's transportation system, something will have to be done to make the motor vehicle/bicycle/pedestrian ecosystem safer for all concerned--that is, travelers and bystanders.  Perhaps that means designated bike lanes, with curbs.  And who knows what else.

But in any case, a reminder that the right infrastructure can shape life for the better.  And lack of the right infrastructure can leave things getting worse and worse. 

Singapore takes the lead--and keeps working to add to its lead. 

An Infrastructure Bank? Someday?

National Journal's Jill Lawrence writes of the challenges that business is facing developing a pro-business agenda:

If there's an issue that symbolizes those complications, it's infrastructure. Roads, rail, ports, bridges, airports, broadband—who doesn't love infrastructure? Especially in a time of high unemployment, low interest rates, and regular reports about how our infrastructure is "crumbling." Yet, despite supporters ranging from Obama and the AFL-CIO to the Chamber of Commerce, there has been no infrastructure infusion in the past few years. Miller was partial to an infrastructure bank proposed by then-Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., that would have leveraged private funds, but it languished with only Democratic backing. Did Miller try to get some Republican cosponsors? "Yes. And we were never able to."

Since then, Republicans have reacted negatively to a new Obama proposal to cut corporate taxes and use a onetime "transition fee" on repatriated corporate earnings for infrastructure projects. Miller, meanwhile, is now interested in a House infrastructure bill introduced with bipartisan support. But business groups did not mount a full-court press on earlier measures—far from it—and there is no concerted campaign for this one as yet.

More on Elon Musk's "Hyperloop"

On August 13, an unknown (at least to me) blogger posted a fierce critique of Elon Musk's "Hyperloop" idea.

The piece has generated a lively debate--some 321 comments, and counting.  

Bodys Isek Kingelez--Urban Visionary

National Geographic's Robert Draper provides us with a fascinating peek into Kinshasha, Democratic Republic of Congo.   Kinshasha, a city of some 10 million, is the capital of the DRC.

Of particular note is the work of one Bodys Isek Kingelez, pictured above, with some of his work. Kingelez has made a good career for himself imagining fantastic cities.

Cool cities would be a good thing for Congo, for Africa--and for America.  And the world.

As Draper writes:

Behold the city reimagined. Its gateway is a multicolored wheel. Beyond the wheel stretches a ribbonlike boulevard that crosses a Garden of Eden and concludes at a metropolis jutting out of a large body of water. The skyscrapers are bright and fantastically proportioned, a cross between Dubai and Legoland. Some of the buildings bear the emblem of a commercial product like toothpaste or beer; others, a place: Libya, U.S.A., Himalaya. The city is spotless, fiercely original. Also completely uninhabited.

The creator of the intricate cardboard-and-Plexiglas model city is Bodys Isek Kingelez. He looms over it, a bantamlike, middle-aged Kinois dressed entirely in red, from his sunglasses to his leather shoes. “Why don’t we build on water? There’s lots of space! It’s because we are afraid,” the artist declares. “Architects and builders worldwide can try to learn from my perception so as to help the forthcoming generations. I’m dreaming cities of peace. As a self-made intellectual, I haven’t yet reached the point I wish to reach. I’d like to help the Earth above all. Voilà.”

To be in the presence of the reclusive artist and his carnival-like models is to understand that he is not really compelled by altruism. Instead, he embodies the human audacity to reorder and wholly reinvent. To be God, as Kingelez himself observes: “When God created the world, it was Solomon who created the first great buildings. Today I’m just following God’s creation. I never sketch first. Academicians draw. I’m a creator. I rely on my vision.”

The vision came to him, the artist says, in 1979, while he was teaching economics in Kinshasa. “I had a revelation—it was like I was ill,” he recalls. “The voice said, ‘You have much to do. Find scissors, glue, and paper.’ I asked, ‘What can I do with these?’ The spirit told me, ‘Simply begin. You will see.’ I stayed at home with nothing to eat. The small model was finished in two weeks. Someone from my family came to visit and saw it. He said, ‘You must sell it!’”

He has been exhibiting and selling his models across Europe and the U.S. ever since. 

This is the sort of vision we need here in the US, too--it will help restore the romance of construction and infrastructure-building. 

Elon Musk's "Hyperloop" Idea -- Where It Could Fit in the Transportation Vision of the Future

Tech visionary Elon Musk has put forth his "hyperloop" transportation idea, which, maybe, he will personally be working on, after all. 

It's really, really great that Musk is thinking big.  America needs that sort of thinking.  It's a shame that technological feasible solutions are categorized as "science fiction"--that is, regarded as something in the far-off, way-out future.   If "The Jetsons" could imagine this sort of technology a half-century ago, then there's no reason that we, in the real world, couldn't and shouldn't be making these visions come true.

However, even if we get past the usual objections of cost, regulation, NIMBYs, trial lawyers--as I hope we will, through enlightened forward-looking leadership!--we can still wonder whether the hyperloop is really the future of mass transportation.   The hyperloop might compete with airplanes, sure, but will it really displace the personal vehicle?  Probably not.

Consider: Suppose you ride from San Francisco to LA in your hyperloop--which is now a half-hour trip.  Cool.  So you get out of the station in... where?  downtown LA?   If so, then there's a good chance that you're still many miles from where you really want to be.   Century City in West LA is 15 miles away, Orange County is 30 miles away, and so on.  So how do you get to where you are going? And then, once there, how do you get around?  The truly desirable transportation system is point-to-point, not hub-and-spoke.  So if you say you are traveling from SF to LA, you really mean that you are traveling from, say, Palo Alto to Santa Monica, and that means that on both ends of the trip, the hyperloop leaves you with other kinds of transportation needs, be it car, bicycle, skateboard, whatever.

In other words, for extended and/or multi-point trips, most likely, you will want your car or other form of personal transportation with you.  Now of course, your car can be as cool as you want it to be.  That is, it can fully automated, a la the sorts of driverless cars that we read about all the time now.   So you can be "driving" around, getting from point to point, even as you are working, playing, sleeping.   Pretty cool.

Ah, but what about the selling point of the hyperloop, which is extreme speed?  Cars can be made to go a lot faster, too, through automated "car trains," which would link up cars into "convoys" as they go down smart highways.  That is, you're in the car, but the car zips along at computer-controlled speed, perhaps linked to some sort of towing system.   Such assemblies could go much faster than current speeds.

And of course, long run, Musk's hyperloops could be expanded to include cars themselves, like the Amtrak "autotrain" that takes you and your car to Florida.

Just about anything is possible; we just need the vision to do it.  Fortunately, we have guides such as Elon Musk.   But it will take all of us to be part of integrated solution that works for America as a whole.  

Vision

Details about Elon Musk's possible old/new "Hyperloop" transportation idea are percolating out.  I am skeptical that these sorts of "High Speed Rail 2.0"-type ideas will displace personal transportation, but it's an exciting and important debate.  

American Strength needs Missile Defense

This would, indeed, be a good time to move ahead with missile defense. 

McKinsey on Infrastructure

One of these "game changers" is infrastructure.  As the authors write:

Increased investment in infrastructure, with a new emphasis on productivity. The backlog of maintenance and upgrades for US roads, highways, bridges, and transit and water systems is reaching critical levels. The United States must increase its annual infrastructure investment by one percentage point of GDP to erase this competitive disadvantage. By 2020, that could create up to 1.8 million jobs and boost annual GDP by up to $320 billion. The impact could grow to $600 billion annually by 2030 if the selection, delivery, and operation of infrastructure investments improve.

Infrastructure and Jobs

James Surowiecki, writing in The New Yorker:

We also need many more of the “middle-class jobs” we’re always hearing about. A recent McKinsey report suggested that the government should invest almost a trillion dollars over the next five years in repairing and upgrading the national infrastructure, which seems like a good place to start. And we really need the economy as a whole to grow faster, because that would both increase the supply of good jobs and improve the bargaining power of low-wage workers. As Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, told me, “The best friend that low-wage workers have is a strong economy and a tight job market.” It isn’t enough to make bad jobs better. We need to create better jobs.

Miami Herald/Fresno Bee editorial: "'Grand bargain' is precisely the sort of deal lawmakers should embrace"

The Fresno Bee has approvingly reprinted an editorial from The Miami Herald: "'Grand bargain' is precisely the sort of deal lawmakers should embrace."  

The editorial declares that both parties in Washington should embrace the deal whose outlines are so apparent--a cut in the corporate income tax rate, and an increase in job-creating infrastructure spending: 

And it's not as if there's no real work to be done. America's decaying roads and bridges sorely need sprucing up. During the August recess, voters in South Florida and elsewhere should let their members of Congress know that it's time to set austerity aside and start investing in the economy.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/08/06/3426181/grand-bargain-is-precisely-the.html#storylink=cpy

A Point on the History of Public Investment in US Transportation

In The Wall Street Journal today, writers Larry Schweikart and Burton Folsom make their case against the Obama administration's infrastructure plans.  

As they write:

Railroads are another example of the infrastructure-follows-entrepreneurship rule. Before the 1860s, almost all railroads were privately financed and built. One exception was in Michigan, where the state tried to build two railroads but lost money doing so, and thus happily sold both to private owners in 1846. When the federal government decided to do infrastructure in the 1860s, and build the transcontinental railroads (or "intercontinental railroad," as Mr. Obama called it in 2011), the laying of track followed the huge and successful private investments in railroads.

In fact, when the government built the transcontinentals, they were politically corrupt and often—especially in the case of the Union Pacific and the Northern Pacific—went broke. One cause of the failure: Track was laid ahead of settlements. Mr. Obama wants to do something similar with high-speed rail. The Great Northern Railroad, privately built by Canadian immigrant James J. Hill, was the only transcontinental to be consistently profitable. It was also the only transcontinental to receive no federal aid. In railroads, then, infrastructure not only followed the major capital investment, it was done better privately than by government. [emphasis added] 

A bold point.  However, as one Lord Keynes (probably not his real name) argued in a 2011 post, that's not the whole story of Hill.   "Keynes" points us toward the Wikipedia entry on the St. Paul Paul and Pacific Railroad, which tells a different story.

At the moment, I don't have time to chase down all the quotes herein, or to directly compare the scholarship here, so for the time being, I will simply post both arguments, those of Schweikart/Folsom and those of "Keynes."

As "Keynes" presents the other side:

James J. Hill is often invoked as a hero by apologists for extreme laissez faire, because his railway was allegedly built completely privately, without any government subsidies or land grants. Unfortunately, there some inconvenient facts the free market ideologues leave out when they discuss Hill and the Great Northern Railway:

(1) Hill acquired a pre-existing railway called the Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad (which was originally charted as the “Minnesota and Pacific Railroad” in 1857) as the starting basis for his Great Northern Railway. The Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad existed because of massive government support:

“In 1857, the territorial legislature of the state of Minnesota issued a charter to the Minnesota and Pacific Railroad to build a standard gauge railway from Stillwater in the east to St. Paul in the west .... The railroad received a grant of 2,460,000 acres (1,000,000 ha) of land from the territorial legislature. This was the seventh largest land grant of the 75 given to railroads nationwide between 1850 and 1871. Construction began in the autumn of 1857, and in 1856 the state backed a $5 million bond issue to support the new rail system. But speculators manipulated the nascent railroad’s profits, overcharged it for supplies, and sold off some of its assets. It went bankrupt in 1860, and the new state legislature purchased all of its assets for a mere $1,000. … In 1862, the state legislature reorganized the bankrupt railroad as the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad.
....
But James J. Hill, who ran steamboats on the Red River, knew that the SP&P owned very valuable land grants and saw the potential of the railroad. Hill convinced John S. Kennedy (a New York City banker who had represented the Dutch bondholders), Norman Kittson (Hill’s friend and a wealthy fur trader), Donald Smith (a Montreal banker and executive with the Hudson’s Bay Company), and George Stephen (Smith’s cousin and a wealthy railroad executive) to invest $5.5 million in purchasing the railroad. On March 13, 1878, the road's creditors formally signed an agreement transferring their bonds and control of the railroad to Hill's investment group. On September 18, 1889, Hill changed the name of the Minneapolis and St. Cloud Railway (a railroad which existed primarily on paper, but which held very extensive land grants throughout the Midwest and Pacific Northwest) to the Great Northern Railway. On February 1, 1890, he transferred ownership of the StPM&M, Montana Central Railway, and other rail systems he owned to the Great Northern.”

Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad, Wikipedia.

(2) Hill benefited from government negotiations with Native Americans to obtain the right to build his railway on their land:

“The Great Northern had to stop construction in 1886 to wait for the government’s negotiations for Indian lands. The 1887 agreement over the Sweetgrass Hills gave the Great Northern Railway a 75-foot right-of-way over the Rocky mountains and through Western Montana-plus permission to use all the stone and lumber it needed for construction.” (Holmes, Dailey, and Walter 2008: 175).

Lloyd J. Mercer summarises how Hill’s Great Northern System relied on the acquisition of previous state-subsidised railways with land grants:

“The Great Northern System was an outgrowth of the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad, which was formed May 23, 1879, considerably after the end of the land grant era. The St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba was initially formed out of the foreclosed St. Paul and Pacific railroad, which had come into possession of a federal land grant created by an act of March 3, 1857. The unsold portion of that old grant passed to the new company and became the major part of the land grant of the Great Northern System. In 1880–1881 the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba acquired the charter of the Minneapolis and St. Cloud Railway Company, to which was attached a land grant from the State of Minnesota in the amount of 10 sections per mile. This grant formed the remainder of the land grant of the Great Northern System, which became the beneficiary of efforts to subsidize predecessor railroads that were, unlike the Great Northern, truly pioneer effects.” (Mercer 1982: 59–60).

Mercer (1982: 148) also concludes the acceleration of the “construction and operation [sc. of America’s railways] through subsidization made a positive contribution to nineteenth-century economic growth in the United States. On efficiency grounds government intervention in the timing of the railroad building decision was rational.” James J. Hill was in fact a beneficiary of that government intervention by his acquisition of earlier railways.

"Obama to propose 'grand bargain' on corporate tax rate, infrastructure"

Reuters headline.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski: "It's not politics, it's physics."

US Senator Barbara Mikulski speaks out on infrastructure:

“Steel rusts. Asphalt wears out. Buildings need to be repaired and maintained. It is not politics. It’s physics. We have to make investments today so that our nation can grow." 

She continued: 

"This isn't a bill where jobs will be on a slow boat to China or a fast track to Mexico. It puts America on the right track to meet these needs in transportation.  

"There's a very good reason that we need this bill. The American Civil Engineers Society says the need for physical infrastructure for our country is piling up. Steel rusts. Asphalt wears out. Buildings need to be repaired and maintained.  

"It is not politics. It's physics. We have to make investments today so that our nation can grow. 

"We still have an unemployment rate of over seven percent, so how do we get America moving? Public investments that create private-sector jobs. That's what we like about transportation.  

"This bill, under the leadership of Senators Murray and Collins, includes funds for the Federal Aviation Administration for airports. It includes the Federal Highway Administration to build and repair roads. It includes Amtrak and also the National Transportation Safety Board – when there is an accident, they are on the job finding out what the problems are. This bill keeps America moving on land, sea and in the air. But most of all, it's about the bread and butter issues. It meets real needs in real time, building roads and building communities.  

"Let's cooperate for better, more effective infrastructure"

Sheila Bair’s visionary ideas on infrastructure, published in Fortune, continue to reverberate. 

Writing for the Fort Collins Coloradoan, Neil Grigg, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University, takes note of Bair's idea and adds his own suggestions on moving forward on infrastructure. 

He starts with an assessment of the situation in his home state:

Here in Colorado, there is a lot to celebrate. In Fort Collins, our Master Transportation Plan outlines a multi-modal approach for vehicles, bikes, pedestrians and mass transit. Statewide, CDOT works with the regional planning organizations to create shared plans. A lot is happening to improve roads and bridges across the state.

Will our present trajectory get us where we need to go? Which investments would be strategic for Colorado? High-speed rail? A solution to the I-70 corridor? More mass transit? China confronts issues like these at the national level and acts quicker than we do. Our system demands participation, intergovernmental cooperation, good staff work, public-private involvement and a lot of patience.

Grigg's points on cooperation and participation are well taken.  Indeed, they echo the arguments made by MIT historian Thomas Hughes, in his 2002 book, Rescuing Prometheus.  Hughes cited four megaprojects  in the 20th century US, including the Boston Central Artery/Tunnel project, aka, The Big Dig.   That project, in particular, Hughes wrote, depended on public buy-in.  There's simply no other way to get anything done in this hyper-pluralistic environment.  

Returning to the present day in Colorado, Grigg continues: 

Looking ahead, we must take matters in our own hands with cooperative but visionary statewide plans. It is not about “keep on doing what you are doing.” It is about a future where infrastructure fuels the economy and job creation. Why not an infrastructure grade based on mobility, support for the economy and jobs, enhanced quality of life and environmental protection? Grades could also be assigned for intergovernmental and public-private cooperation.

We need to keep the conversation going and find strategies to move the state ahead. Let’s prove that our system works. It will require action under the dome but also in courthouses, city halls, school rooms and chambers of commerce around the state.

The Growth Message is a Winner

An "Anglo" Republican defeated an Hispanic Democrat in an overwhelmingly Hispanic and Democratic California state senate district.   How did that happen, just as the experts all seemingly agreed that The Golden State was really the Blue State?

The big issue was jobs for the 16th district, located in the Central Valley of California.  The GOPer, one Andy Vidak, had a better pro-jobs message; that message obviously transcended ethnicity, partisanship, and the Democrat's huge money advantage.

As Los Angeles-based public intellectual Gregory Rodriguez has argued for years, Hispanics of today are best compared to the American "ethnics"--mostly Central and European--of a century ago.  That is, work- and family-oriented, socially conservative, but also economically liberal--liberal in the old sense, the New Deal sense.

So the winning message for them would be jobs and wages.    And that's the message that Republican Vidak, not the Democrat Perez, was most effective at delivering.

As I have argued in the past, the GOP--or, for that matter, Democrats of an older stripe--could do much more with that pro-growth/anti-Malthusian message if they wanted to.

Sheila Bair: "A bold plan for rebuilding our roads and bridges"

Sheila Bair, former chair of the FDIC, writing in Fortune magazine.

She outlines several different possible financing mechanisms:

With government borrowing rates low (courtesy of the Fed) and so many construction workers eager for work, you would think that the federal government would launch major infrastructure programs. Unfortunately, the Fed’s cheap money has been squandered mostly on sugar-high stimulus and paper profits in the stock and bond markets — ephemeral benefits that are fading fast. In contrast, infrastructure programs would have lasting and much-needed benefits for this and future generations. Yet Washington’s bigwigs are providing little leadership on the issue, and they are missing the boat, as government borrowing costs will continue to go up.

Many in the GOP seem to think the government spends too much already and is too incompetent to run major infrastructure programs. But lots of sensible people, including those at the New America Foundation, a leading centrist think tank, have proposed the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank, which would support only projects that were approved by a team of engineers and that could be paid for over time with user fees or dedicated revenues like energy taxes.

China plans world's longest sea tunnel at $42 billion

Reuters has the details. 

Thomas Jefferson, Apostle of Minimal Government. President Jefferson, Apostle of American Strength.

Thomas Jefferson is often regarded as the apostle of small-government libertarianism.  Indeed, the Sage of Monticello was a lifelong champion of free speech and religious liberty.  And for most of his career, he was also a champion of small government.

Yet as the third president of the United States, Jefferson underwent something of a conversion. Curiously, this conversion is not always noted by some of his self-proclaimed acolytes who prefer the earlier Jefferson to the later Jefferson.*

Still, Jefferson was undeniably a small-government partisan for the bulk of his life.  As he declared in first inaugural address in 1801, the national goal should be:

"A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."

In other words, a "nightwatchman state."  That's what many today assert that Jefferson was calling for. And for most of his life, perhaps he was.

Yet Jefferson clearly changed during the course of his presidency, from 1801 to 1809.   The experience of dealing with the great powers of Europe, before and during his time in the White House--as well as the four-year war against the Barbary Pirates--taught him that America, as a nation, needed to be politically and militarily strong.  Moral suasion and high-minded non-intervention were not going to be adequate in the face of ruthless enemies.

So Jefferson established the US Military Academy at West Point in 1802.

That same year, France seized control of Spain's Louisiana Territories--roughly half of the future continental United States.  Jefferson could see what a big deal this was, writing to a friend,

"This little event, of France's possessing herself of Louisiana, is the embryo of a tornado which will burst on the countries on both sides of the Atlantic and involve in it's effects their highest destinies."

In other words, Jefferson the geopolitician could see a huge national security threat looming on America's western frontier.  I response, he undertook the Louisiana Purchase the following year, firmly establishing the the USA as the dominant geopolitical power in North America.

In other words, the imperatives of statecraft were changing Jefferson.  He was becoming an apostle of American Strength.

In his eighth message to Congress, delivered on November 8, 1808, Jefferson went further:  He supported the system of publicly-owned peace-time military arsenals, to be supplemented--but not replaced--during wartime by private contractors:

"Under the acts of March 11th and April 23d, respecting arms, the difficulty of procuring them from abroad, during the present situation and dispositions of Europe, induced us to direct our whole efforts to the means of internal supply. The public factories have, therefore, been enlarged, additional machineries erected, and in proportion as artificers can be found or formed, their effect, already more than doubled, may be increased so as to keep pace with the yearly increase of the militia. The annual sums appropriated by the latter act, have been directed to the encouragement of private factories of arms, and contracts have been entered into with individual undertakers to nearly the amount of the first year's appropriation."

Jefferson went further: He sought out "internal improvements"--what we today call infrastructure-- within the US.  As he said, we had no choice: 

"The situation into which we have thus been forced, has impelled us to apply a portion of our industry and capital to internal manufactures and improvements. The extent of this conversion is daily increasing, and little doubt remains that the establishments formed and forming will -- under the auspices of cheaper materials and subsistence, the freedom of labor from taxation with us, and of protecting duties and prohibitions -- become permanent."

Finally, he made clear his preference for using surplus federal revenues, not for tax cuts, but for public investments in, as he delineated, “roads, canals, rivers, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union”:

"The probable accumulation of the surpluses of revenue beyond what can be applied to the payment of the public debt, whenever the freedom and safety of our commerce shall be restored, merits the consideration of Congress. Shall it lie unproductive in the public vaults? Shall the revenue be reduced? Or shall it rather be appropriated to the improvements of roads, canals, rivers, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union, under the powers which Congress may already possess, or such amendment of the constitution as may be approved by the States?"

A strong military, a strong country.  That's American Strength.

Michael Lind of the New America Foundation offers a more cogent and detailed chronicle of Jefferson's presidency in his 2012 book, Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States.

* Those who speak with the authority of the historical past have a huge advantage in contemporary debates.  And we might note that those who would seek to invoke history have not always been scrupulous as to their historical invocations.

We might recall a quote from the French essayist Michel de Montaigne, who back in the 16th century observed that the "learned authors" of his time chose to refer to such authoritative texts as Plato's dialogues, using them as nothing more than rhetorical throw-weight for their own views. Quoth Montaigne: "See how Plato is tossed and turned about. All are honored to have his support, so they couch him on their own side. They trot him out and slip him into any new opinion which fashion will accept. When matters take a different turn, then they make him disagree with himself."  Plato was not the first, nor was Jefferson the last, to receive such historical revisionism.  

Indeed, in their enthusiasm for making Jefferson seem more to their liking, scholars and pundits have even sought to "improve" on the man--or their ideal of the man.  A quote commonly attributed to Jefferson--"That government is best that governs least"--appears not to be from Jefferson at all, but rather, from Henry David Thoreau.

New York City Infrastructure

Washington Post headline: "New York aims to fortify itself against next big storm, climate change."

Infrastructure and the Fate of Nations

The New York Times reports on "the New Silk Road"--that is, the railroad line connecting Europe to China.   As the Times puts it, the Silk Road, which was eclipsed by ocean-going cargo ships, is now being brought back: "Now, Hewlett-Packard has revived the route as a faster, overland alternative to shipping electronics from China to European markets by sea."

Anything that strengthens the hand of the Russians is of interest to the US, of course.  And yet the revival the Silk Road is a reminder that  a single piece of infrastructure can upset existing trade relations--and the fate of nations.

See: Canal, Erie, Railroad, Transcontinental, Canal, Panama, and Highways, Interstate.

"The 10 Best Airports That Put America to Shame"

The Business Insider has pictures of all of them.   Meanwhile, we can ask: Why don't we have these?

This is the Changi Airport in Singapore.

And here's another look:

We could have this here in America, too, if we wanted it.