We Don't Need More Highways 244
Hugh Pickens writes "When it comes to infrastructure, politicians usually prefer shiny new projects over humdrum repairs. A brand-new highway is exciting: There's a ribbon-cutting, and there's less need to clog up existing lanes with orange cones and repair crews. So it's not surprising that 57 percent of all state highway funding goes toward new construction, often stretching out to the suburbs, even though new roads represent just 1.3 percent of the overall system. Now Brad Plumer writes in the Washington Post that many transportation reformers think this is a wrong-headed approach and that we should focus our dollars on fixing and upgrading existing infrastructure rather than continuing to build sprawling new roads). UCLA economist Matthew Kahn and the University of Minnesota's David Levinson made a more detailed case for a 'fix-it first' strategy. They noted that, at the moment, federal highway spending doesn't get subjected to strict cost-benefit analysis, and governments often build new roads when they arguably shouldn't (PDF). And that's to say nothing of data suggesting that poor road conditions are a 'significant factor' in one-third of all fatal crashes, and cause extra wear and tear on cars."
how about high speed rail instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
do we really need more gas guzzlers chugging along a bunch of asphalt strips to no where?
Re:Government roads (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's the selfish U.S. electorate that thinks that everyone needs their own car that prevents more efficient transportation from being built. It's not "duh gubmint" preventing anything. If that were the case why is it that the governments in Southeast Asia built all sorts of high-speed trains and extensive rail and bus systems?
on the other hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Government roads (Score:5, Insightful)
Your highways where built for troops and war... and getting your political elite out of cities
ie very efficient transportation - just not for you.
China is funding a rail system in Turkey for $35 billion.
http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=277360 [todayszaman.com]
Long term thats China to Spain and England by rail. No roads, no shipping.
Re:how about high speed rail instead? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or Europe, or Japan, or really anywhere except the US.
Roads killing communities (Score:3, Insightful)
An interesting study shows how the cross-bronx expressway was almost instrumental in destroying the vibrant pre-war south bronx neighborhoods. Point being that they divide and destroy communities.
The problem is that the government made a huge commitment to interstate roads after the war (ww2) and basically put them everywhere without regard for communities. This was a failed government policy driven by lobbyists from oil companies/auto makers and misguided politicians who wanted to bring the autobahn stateside.
But if you look around the world you will see governments and communities thriving based upon public transport and planning that is not all automobile based. So the answer would be to vote in politicians that realize this and work towards more sustainable transport and planning.
Now to reform the wretched election laws in this country of ours....
Building Is Cheap, Repairs Are Expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the rambling, the TFA made it's only salient point with the following:
Compared to repairing existing roads, new road construction is the cheaper option, even with the costs of additional steps such as planning and grading. Repairs are incredibly expensive and inconvenient for exactly the above reason; it's much harder, much more dangerous, and much slower work to repair a surface in active use, and in the meantime some fraction of that infrastructure is put out of use. When you do need to make significant repairs, what you end up with is Carmageddon [laweekly.com], which users can't put up with for long periods of time.
Simply put, many of these major roads are too important and too busy to take out of commission for any period of time for repairs. Your best option quite often comes down to building a parallel track, at which point the original track becomes free for repairs (or more historically, decommissioning).
This is why politicians shouldn't be in charge (Score:5, Insightful)
Merely symptomatic (Score:5, Insightful)
It's symptomatic of our culture which is much more about "buying new" then "repairing old". This comes somewhat, I admit, out of economic reality: for most of our consumer goods it really is cheaper to replace than renew.
But the approach holds through larger purchases as well - homes and cars, for example. Few people have the skills or interest to fix them up to 'like new' condition, when it's easier (especially now in terms of housing) to get a brand new one dirt-cheap.
I live in a 100+ year old home, and it has its charms, certainly, but I'm well aware that (given my lack of construction skills/desire) it would have made more sense to just buy a new home instead. (Thank god my father in law is unbelievably skilled in construction, and that he loves his daughter apparently without limits.)
To the point, though, this is the accommodation (if not a driver) of urban sprawl. I live in the Twin Cities and if you drive around the perimeter you STILL see waves of new home construction - where are all these people coming from? Is this just urban flight?
It's one of the reasons I try to patronizing Dunn Brothers coffee as much as I can; I don't know if it's corporate policy, but around here they've deliberately placed their stores in really old buildings and paid the (high) cost to refurbish and bring them up to code, instead of grabbing a slot in the shiny new strip mall a half-mile down the road. In Eden Prairie, they even saved an historical brick home that the local preservationists couldn't afford to maintain/hold, turning it into really a terrific coffeeshop.
Re:on the other hand (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember the famous "bridge to nowhere"?
You mean the same "Bridge to Nowhere" that Palin was a supporter of when running for Governor in 2006 but then rewrote history when a VP candidate to claim that she was against Congress earmarking the money? And actually that very same bridge was very popular within Alaska of the citizens. So other than Palin using it is a political stunt during her VP run, it doesn't actually fit into what you were claiming.
Of course what we need (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is why politicians shouldn't be in charge (Score:5, Insightful)
That's actually what the founding fathers had envisioned. They believed nobody would want to be in politics for long, so they never envisioned career politicians. While many of them were lawyers, there were also judges, farmers, and scientists there.
At this point, the idea of a doctor taking a few years off from their practice, a scientist taking a break from research, or a farmer leaving their farm to go spend a few years in DC is very foreign to us. In most cases, they would have a very hard time returning to their occupation due to the toll that is taken by that much time away.
That said, I think these sort of people are way more skilled in cutting deals than the typical crop of politicians. As Jon Stewart tried to point out with his "Rally to Restore Sanity" a couple years ago, the average person has to work with people they don't like, and come to agreements with those people, on a daily basis. Yet Congress can't seem to do the same.
Re:Government roads (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I commute (as infrequently as possible), I cannot help but look and see the tens of thousands of dollars that each individual has chosen to spend on transportation, and imagine what spending a tenth of that money would have done for public transit.
It's a hidden tax which impacts the middle class most severely. It is a spectacular inefficiency, and in my opinion one of the strongest arguments against Libertarianism.
The other strong argument against Libertarianism is reality.
Re:how about high speed rail instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Elevators represents a convenient ride home for tens and hundreds of thousands of people who prefer that lifestyle. And "if some greenie didn't put a highway between work and your home" why do you live there? Live somewhere else, work somewhere else, or find a way to telecommute. Why does the free market suddenly fail and "this is the only job I'll ever find and thus the world has to change to make it convenient for me" suddenly pop out of Slashdot as soon as we start talking about the road network?
Re:Government roads (Score:4, Insightful)
The efficiency of mass transit goes up at least linearly with population density. In the US, only some large city routes reach break-even for mass transit versus individual transit, and in most of those one pays a cost in transit time in order to realize the relative gains for other resources. (Side note: Many of those routes depend on subsidies to gain enough riders for break-even, and those cities' transit systems tend to have a lot of other routes that don't break even.)
It will never get better. (Score:2, Insightful)
We need more light rail for public transportation. Instead we rip up the train tracks and turn them into bike trails. Even small cities like the ultra tiny one I work in, only 550,000 people, can use light rail to connect the miniscule 100,000 people communities that are 30-50 miles away to it. wo raillines side by side to allow a loop of two trains would give you a MAJOR difference. But no, let's support the Auto industry by building roads that ned to be repaired every year.
Re:how about high speed rail instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
I keep hearing this over and over again. "Well if it won't work in the whole US, then we can't do it". There are large portions of the US that look pretty similar to Europe. Wyoming and Kansas are not it. But the east and west coasts. Milwaukee to Detroit to Indy/Louisville doesn't seem too different from the German countryside.
the us rail system is setup for freight and that t (Score:5, Insightful)
the us rail system is setup for freight and that ties up the tracks.
To add high speed will take a lot of building.
Re:how about high speed rail instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even as we transition to electric go carts, unless we build new and bigger highways, the gridlock to get home will be intolerable as the population thickens. Inevitably, there will be neighborhoods where you don't want to get stuck in traffic because some greenie didn't put a highway between work and your home. so now you drive 4 hours a day to work 8+ hours a day and average 3+ useful hours of useful time to have a life. So then we pack into the cities to be closer to work. Now Kansas City can start to look like Tokyo and New York can look like a cyberpunk sprawl.
What a good green idea, let's have no new highways for a growing population.
This may sound a little snarky, but that's not really my intent. Please forgive me for not wanting to fund your desire to live in a brand new suburb with a nice big lawn planted on what what was, until last year, farmland. Look, I'm not telling you where you should live, but I am telling you that when you make a choice to avoid being "packed in", your commute is not my problem. If by not building more superhighways to suburbia, we can discourage people from commuting 20 or 30 miles from a McMansion to work, I'm all for it.
You used Kansas City as an example of a place that could be packed in like Tokyo, but in reality, there is plenty of vacant land right in town. The land covered by the metro area is nearly as big as NYC, but only a fraction as many people live there. This situation is repeated in many US cities: usable land in town goes underutilized as new houses are built in outlying areas. You could easily accommodate twice as many people in the same space without transforming it into something you'd see in a dystopian anime. As a bonus, we'd get to "un-blight" our urban cores.
It also wouldn't hurt to make tax breaks for rebuilding and renovating existing housing the same as the mortgage tax deduction for new construction.