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marmar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-16-11 01:58 PM
Original message
Addicted to Roads

from Grist:



Breaking free from the infrastructure cult of roads

by Charles Marohn
16 Aug 2011 9:20 AM



Cross-posted from Strong Towns.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has just released a report that should be titled "Pretending it is 1952." Like a broken record, ASCE is again painting a bleak picture of the future if American politicians -- as if they need to be plied -- won't open up the checkbook for our noble engineers. And in a way that the Soviet Central Committee would have expected from Pravda, the media and blogger world is sounding the alarm. This feels more like a cult than a serious discussion on America's future.

In the Long Depression of the 1870s, the railroads found they had overinvested in transportation capacity. Speculating on future growth and the returns on land development, they collectively built more rail lines than could be put to productive use. The result was a huge financial correction in which the private-sector railroads consolidated their routes, downsized their unproductive infrastructure, and put their reserve capacity into endeavors that had a higher rate of return. This was a painful, but necessary, correction.

The parallels to 2011 are obvious. We've built out the interstate highway system as it was originally envisioned -- although we opted to go through cities instead of around as planned -- and then we built some more. We poured money into highways, county roads, and local streets. We have so much transportation infrastructure -- a huge proportion of it with no productivity -- that every level of government is now choking on maintenance costs.

While originally conceived in the name of "national defense," these investments were made in the service of "growth" and the belief that all increases in mobility, no matter how insignificant, would add to the overall prosperity. We've spent trillions to save seconds in the first and last mile of each trip, and what we've gotten is the fake prosperity of a land-use pattern that is bankrupting us, housing bubble and all. This is the essence of the financial correction we are experiencing. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.grist.org/infrastructure/2011-08-15-breaking-free-from-the-infrastructure-cult



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FarCenter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-16-11 02:13 PM
Response to Original message
1. Besides which, we will not be able to afford imported oil to drive on them
Crude oil production stands at about 30 billion barrels per year, but new discoveries are not keeping up. Production at around 80 million barrels per day is flat and will soon be declining as the biggest and cheapest oil fields on the planet begin to produce salt water instead of oil.

Prices for petroleum based fuel is going up, competition for it is increasing, and the US is becoming less competitive vis-a-vis other countries.

We should stop investing in roads and instead invest in electrified rail and light rail. We should also stop investing in far suburban communities and invest in new high-density housing in edge cities and medium size cities.
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AndyTiedye Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-16-11 05:01 PM
Response to Reply #1
5. Then We'll Ride Our Bikes On Them
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gratuitous Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-16-11 02:22 PM
Response to Original message
2. Prepare to be schooled
Countless heart-breaking stories of people who have to commute four hours each way to shitty, minimum wage jobs who are in danger of losing their housing and concomitant scolding for gross insensitivity to commence in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1
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dtexdem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-16-11 02:33 PM
Response to Original message
3. It's not asphalty as it seems.
;-)

That's it -- nothing concrete to say.

Well, actually, good road systems are important to an economy and a society; but that does not mean that our system is a good road system. It's not that the roads are (generally) so bad; it's that the mass transport infrastructure is woefully underdeveloped. In fact, rail transit systems were systematically destroyed after WWII; and what has been built since is, necessarily, very costly -- because it rebuilt in only a minor way what was lost and did so in a much-more costly environment.
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Owlet Donating Member (765 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-16-11 02:57 PM
Response to Original message
4. When my Dad was a kid..
..he got around on these.



Don't talk to the motorman
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AndyTiedye Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-16-11 06:22 PM
Response to Reply #4
6. It Wouldn't Be All That Difficult to Put Them Back
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