Archive for January 15th, 2009

Kazys Varnelis (via bldgblog) runs the stimulus numbers (his comments are in italics):

Modernize Roads, Bridges, Transit and Waterways: To build a 21st century economy, we must engage contractors across the nation to create jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads, and bridges, modernize public buildings, and put people to work cleaning our air, water and land.

· $30 billion for highway construction;

· $31 billion to modernize federal and other public infrastructure with investments that lead to long term energy cost savings;

· $19 billion for clean water, flood control, and environmental restoration investments;

· $10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption.

Here is the meat of the proposals for infrastructure…and it’s pretty lean. $30 billion is less than one year’s expenditure on highways. $10 billion for transit and rail isn’t that much when just one crucial project, the Trans-Hudson Tunnel, is slated to cost $9 billion.

· Airport Improvement Grants: $3 billion for airport improvement projects that will improve safety and reduce congestion. An estimated $41 billion in eligible airport infrastructure projects are needed between 2007-2011.

Last week Business Week was asking people, myself included, what advice they had for the new President vis a vis infrastructure and the stimulus package.

I said this:

“The Interstate Highway System was a marvel, but we don’t need another. By all means, fix the existing traffic infrastructure — roads, bridges, bottlenecks. But heedlessly laying more asphalt is a retrograde approach that rewards a counterproductive quest towards mobility for mobility’s sake. Instead of building new roads — which encourage unsustainable development patterns, more vehicular traffic, and are often only fully occupied at a few peak periods — we need to emphasize transit, but also smarter roads: Sensors that detect “non-recurring” traffic disruptions (the cause of an estimated one-third of traffic delays), intelligent traffic signals and variable speed limits and that react to changing conditions, systems that allow “hard shoulders” to be converted into extra traffic lanes, and real-time, occupancy-based tolling and parking programs.”

I was reminded of this when I read, in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, an op-ed by IBM’s Samuel J. Palmisano.

He wrote: “Smarter infrastructure is by far our best path to creating new jobs and stimulating growth. We at IBM were asked to map this out by President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, and our research shows that a $30 billion stimulus investment in just three areas — smart grids, health-care IT and broadband — could yield almost one million new jobs within one year. That’s possible because these kinds of infrastructure have significantly greater economic and societal multiplier effects than traditional infrastructure like bridges and highways.”

I was particularly interested in the next graph, and, as a thought experiment, try replacing the word ‘power’ with ‘travel’ (as in car travel):

“Our power grids are the largest remaining artifact of the Industrial Age, and they’re due for a smart upgrade. Using broadband data streams, digital sensors and advanced analytics, demand can be understood in real time. Utilities can source and manage power more intelligently, helping to bring renewable sources onto the grid. And consumers could understand the variable cost of power and alter their behavior accordingly. A smarter utility network could also handle the growing demand for hybrid and electric cars. Today’s utility grid would struggle to manage this burden.”

The idea of electric cars becoming part of a utility’s grid is an interesting one — in essence, then, congestion pricing would be the same thing as charging more when electrical usage surges. Of course, up to this point, most driving has been “too cheap to meter.” (or is that ramp-meter?)

Required viewing for all drivers, via Streetsblog. I’m amazed at the way the defense attorney invokes Jeffrey Dahmer as the standard of a “murderer” — as if that crime somehow extends only to rampant, psychotic serial killers. Indeed, there is a risk in how drunk drivers are often portrayed, a subject I’ll return to in a later post: Presenting them as marginal social reprobates (and not, say, first-time offenders straight out of college) may encourage us to think that our own drinking and driving is something apart, something we can manage, something that would not end the same way.

Note that the presence of the DriveCam camera (a technology I describe in the book, though for its driver feedback properties) aided in the crash investigation.