So finally, I hear on both CSPAN and FOX, Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi are to meet in the White House with POTUS on an Infrastructure spending program this week. Though I also heard Sen Mitchell says nothing doing until after 2020. We’ll see what happens.
Another hopeful sign is Trump starting to leak aspects of what he wants in a speech in Green Bay, WI today…so maybe he is finally on board with moving forwards as well?
I am hopeful because we desperately need one for all modes (air, highway and rail). Also a cliff hanger on what they plan to do for Amtrak if anything.
I travel around the country a lot. KC Airport is crap, roads in Wisconsin though better than before are still fairly bad in places. Most of METRA’s 400 railroad bridges are overdue for replacement, etc, etc.
I wouldn’t hold my breath hoping for a Federal infrastructure program of any size. Blondie has a notoriously short attention span and is easily distracted. I also doubt that his brain is properly engaged when he starts flapping his tongue.
He is also a builder and loves to build big things. So he just adores the idea of rebuilding our entire infrastructure. That was his signature ambition even before he became president. The other party loves infrastructure because it is all public sector, and they love the power of massive public spending and growing their government. So they go around chanting the mantra of “The need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.”
The citizens ought to ask how we suddenly arrived at the breaking point where our national infrastructure is all falling down and urgently requires a national campaign of colossal spending to put it all back together. Did we just now discover that things need maintenance?
This is not what it is being made to appear. The potholes are essential tools of this expansion because they irritate drivers and get them to favor massive spending. That is why potholes never get fixed. They are cash cows.
So if this “National Infrastructure Program” takes root, it will be the first thing that both parties agree on. The Public will also be onboard because they hate bumps in the road. With all those stars aligned, this will be a public sector feeding frenzy the likes of which we have never seen.
I wouldn’t hold my breath hoping for a Federal infrastructure program of any size. Blondie has a notoriously short attention span and is easily distracted. I also doubt that his brain is properly engaged when he starts flapping his tongue.
He is also a builder and loves to build big things. So he just adores the idea of rebuilding our entire infrastructure. That was his signature ambition even before he became president. The other party loves infrastructure because it is all public sector, and they love the power of massive public spending and growing their government. So they go around chanting the mantra of “The need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.”
The citizens ought to ask how we suddenly arrived at the breaking point where our national infrastructure is all falling down and urgently requires a national campaign of colossal spending to put it all back together. Did we just now discover that things need maintenance?
This is not what it is being made to appear. The potholes are essential tools of this expansion because they irritate drivers and get them to favor massive spending. That is why potholes never get fixed. They are cash cows.
So if this “National Infrastructure Program” takes root, it will be the first thing that both parties agree on. The Public will also be onboard because they hate bumps in the road. With all those stars aligned, this will be a public sect
I’ve mentioned this before. Several years back I watched a news program on crumbling infrastructure, PBS, CNN, FOX, I don’t remember which. Anyway, a highway engineer was one of the featured interviewees and he said something I haven’t forgotten.
The man stated that there was PLENTY of money to maintain the infrastructure we had, and there always was. The problem was the damn politicians, federal, state, local, take your pick, who kept diverting said money from infrastructure maintanance projects to “sexier” projects like buildings of various types they could put their names on. Stadiums, office buildings, parks, whatever.
Nothing sexy about road repaving, bridge repainting, traffic lights, or overpasses.
Personally I don’t think you should put anyone’s name on anything unless they’re dead, but that’s another matter.
Was the man right? Probably. Quite honestly I don’t think anyone goes into politics unless they have some kind of an ego, some more than others.
Dwight Eisenhower was being honest when he said “I never would have gotten as far as I did if I hadn’t learned to hide my ego!”
More than a hundred years of crumbling infrastructure, since just a few years after the practical introduction of widespread Good Roads activities.
The fundamental issue was, and I think still is, that ‘roads are supposed to be free’. Regardless of whether corrosive chemicals are dumped on them in wintertime; or they were built with materials that degraded unexpectedly … or naturally … over time; or larger and larger trucks pound them into early submission and defeat.
We had a very nice elevated cars-only road all the way around lower Manhattan, clear of all the dock and local traffic. The then-idiot city management salted it regularly without regard to subsequent inspection and maintenance, then took to running loaded garbage trucks on it until, surprise surprise! one started to fall through. Then they expensively cut it down, claiming they were going to replace it with something out in the river, and eventually wound up even more expensively replacing it with … a glorified street with lots of stoplights. At least it’s still free.
The basic problem is rather similar to the situation with the poor liner United States. Lots of money – and I mean lots of money by most historic-preservation standards – was spent to give the poor girl a home. All of it went fast, with the hands and mouths eagerly outstretched for more afterward. But now all the glory is gone, only the need to pay and pay, and when you get something ‘free’ it’s unpleasant to have to start finding victims, or saps, or whatever, who can be made to pay for free. Especially if collectively they can vote your bum tail out and g
The Eisenhower Interstate legislation was enacted in 1956 - the design criteria of the Interstate System was a life span of 50 years - we are now approaching 60 years of service on many things that were only constructed to have a life of 50 years.
As has been stated - maintaining existing infrastructure is not sexy from a political point of view. Better to build ‘something, anything NEW’ that some politician can have his name associated with - from the politician’s point of re-election view.
I agree about that being part of the motive to build new infrastructure, but I think that is only a tiny part compared to the way massive public spending empowers the expansion of government, which is always the biggest motive of all. Spending public money builds the empire. It does not make any difference what the money is spent on. The only thing that matters is spending it. That is where the power comes from.
Building and maintaining infrastructure is one of the most potent means of spending big money. The supposed “crumbling infrastructure” and the need to rebuild it is a ploy on the taxpayers because they see enough broken roads to believe it.
Michigan may rebuild its crumbling infrastructure by increasing the gas tax from 26 cents per gal. to 71 cents per gal. if the governor has her way. Do you believe that the $2-billion per year raised by this tax increase will fix the crumbling infrastructure?
Will they tell us when all of the crumbling infrastructure has been fixed and then roll back the gas tax?
Careful what you wish for. The proposed infrastructure programs favor OTR trucking and provide nominal grants - really insignificant - for freight rail projects. As is often discussed on the General Discussion posts and Fred Frailey’s posts, trucking does not pay for nearly its cost impacts on infrastructure, either in first-in costs (design and construction) or maintenance costs. The true costs of OTR trucking are hidden: this effectively has a lowering impact on trucking rates, and puts freight rail in a less competitive position. This is no slight against trucking: we need trucks, and we could survive a lot better without railroads than we could without trucks. Our nation’s infrastructure is indeed crumbling (in large part due to heavier trucks…) and rebuilding it is essential. But something has to be done to minimize the imbalanced in freight transportation policies relative to infrastructure financing.
My solution (that along with $4 will get you a Frappuccino at Starbucks) is to give freight railroading a 100% tax credit on all infrastructure investment. This would cover everything from land purchases for new yards (ie: new intermodal ramps, transload centers, carload yards, etc) as well as land necessary to re-align 19th Century ROWs into much more modern thoroughfares; construction costs on those plus added main track, sidings, new bridges, tunnels, and signal system renovations, etc.
You will never get this nation to have transparent user-pays taxation. But what you can do to at least balance things somewhat is to use tax credits to reward inv
About seventeen years ago, the Interstate system around Salt Lake CIty was rebuilt in preparation for the Olympics. Many severe potholes have called for quick repair this past winter.
Indeed, proper street maintenance has been deferred recently so that money could be spent on a bicycle trail around the area.
There it is Johnny. What good is a gas tax or any other kind of tax to provide funds for road repair if the money gets frittered away on “feel-good” projects?
And Euclid, the politicians will NEVER roll back a gas tax. They’re just as addicted to other people’s money as a junkie is to heroin.
That is as dumb as asking “will they tell us when they finish painting the Golden Gate bridge, and then roll back the tax that paid for it”.
Did you think there was some magic point all the “old” crumbling infrastructure would be replaced with shining, perfect, modern projects that would never age? Everything crumbles, eventually. Probably the best you can do is stay ahead of the most serious … but then you get into the problem when the squeakiest wheels set a priority that isn’t true triage…
Well of course I was being sarcastic when I asked the question. I am surprised you failed to realise that. But further to your point: The Michigan gas tax increase is said to produce $2-billion per year for fixing the broken infrastructure. They don’t say that it is a permanent tax to maintain infrastructure. If it is, do you think that maintaining the infrustructure will cost $2-billion per year?
Why on earth would you believe that I think that infrustructure never ages? My point it that it should be maintained and the maintenance should be funded. Or is it better to just build it and let it last as long as possible until it “crumbles” and then tear it out and build it again? That would be the process that this nonsense “We must rebuild our crumbling infrastrure” is attached to. That process would be criminal on several levels.
Everything does crumble eventually, but for infrastructure in use, the smartest and only responsible thing to do is m