Repairing the Infrastructure

Trains Magazine Passenger
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Could the economic impact of lowering wages, the humanitarian crises, and a decent life for those who have already immigrated be coupled in a massive Federally-funded program to repair bridges, roads, railways, transit systems, and increase grade-crossing eliminations, even extend to schools and hospitals?

The expenditure would put the Nation further in debt, but it would be a wise investment in the future and be more productive than more jails.

Maybe High-Speed-Rail would be part of the program?

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+1

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The immediate problem I see here, not to ‘politicize’ the thing, is that it’s very quickly going to go to discussions of the Todt Organization building roads … and further into the pit from there.

If you tie ‘work at low Government wage’ to tolerance of immigration, it becomes tantamount ‘enough’ to slave labor that one party will always invoke arguments against the other if they were to try it.

If the Government wage is artificially increased to eliminate this perception, you have the same issue as much of the Green New Deal: it isn’t even remotely possible to arrange for all the ‘dollars’ without ruining fiscal or monetary policy as we know it. Which might not be that much of a bad thing in some respects … but there would be nothing practical to replace any of what we have with anything better, in any presumable term.

If you open up the ‘infrastructure corps’ to fair hiring practice, you’re going to have the usual problems with the usual entitled cohorts, and the usual get-rich-quick and see-my-attorney professional litigation pressure groups (doubtless with ad-hoc consortia of lawyers piling on as we now see for “bad drugs” or now-soft environmental chemical targets).

The question I have for Mr. Klepper is: what strict engineering safeguards against runaway costs or creeping incompetence covered by metastasizing change orders is he proposing to implement – and how do you keep Godwin out of the discussions that result?

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Improvements in the nation’s roadways, electrical systems, water systems, communications networks, etc. could be made without increasing the national debt. Just increase the user fees to pay for the improvements.

Why does the United States need to copy other country’s high-speed rail systems? Upgrading existing rail lines so that they can deliver average speeds between 90 and 100 mph over 200 to 250 miles may be the best outcome. Assuming the enhancements will attract more customers willing to pay higher fares for a better ride, the cost of these improvements should be passed through to the users.

Amtrak already carries more passengers between New York City and Washington, D.C. than its commercial competitors. Moreover, it has a substantial portion of the commercial market between New York and Boston. Spending billions for a high-speed line between Washington and Boston does not seem to make a lot of sense.

The unemployment rate in the United States is between 3.3 and 3.7 percent. In Texas, at least, finding qualified persons to work is construction is a major challenge. A major public works program would only acerbate the problem.

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You’re one of the posters with the most distinctive competence to address the various issues in this idea. But I would comment on a couple of the assumptions you’re using so far:

Some portion of this is what economists call ‘structural unemployment’ – including people who are technically ‘between jobs’ or whose jobs have become technologically obsolescent or economically unviable during the analysis period, although training might put them ‘back in a job’ quickly thereafter – and this shouldn’t be counted in any analysis of policy as if it could be ‘solved’.

Note that neither the methodologies nor the data actually collected gives you much of a handle on this, or on whatever policy responses might affect it. That’s not to say it can’t be done; just that it needs to be before drawing further conclusions on ‘umemployed’ as potential pools for enhanced Government make-work projects, or as more than transient workers making a few bucks between jobs, which I think is not the kind of worker likely to do a professional job on infrastructure projects.

But this is precisely the situation Mr. Klepper is talking about addressing with his new program: finding, qualifying, and allocating large numbers of (presumably-dedicated) workers strictly to infrastructure, and presumably freeing up some number of, say, framers or concrete men for work on other ‘construction.’

Only if it weren’t strictly addressed to projects that “private industry” couldn’t touch, or would struggle with and overcharge for. Mr. Klepper’s project is st

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Remember why we have a immigration problem in the first place - those ‘upstanding businessmen’ who sought out a undocumented workforce that could be extorted to work for sub-standard pay and working conditions that still offered more than could be found in their home country under any circumstance that was available to them. People don’t leave their ‘home’ unless they feature they can better their lot in life in a new location.

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A number of real and important problems have been posted as affecting the realizatin of my basic idea. However, there are models of programs that can be studied for their successess and shortcomings to optimize approaches to realizing the idea. Among the programs that can be reviewed.

Construction of New York City’s subways

Construction of TVA facilities

The Depression CCC Program

The Manhattan Project (Atomic Bomb)

The Interstate Highway Program

Follow-up after the WTC disaster, both buildling construction and subway repair

Repairs after Sandy

Israel’s resettlement of 400,000 Holocaust survivors and 750,000 refugees from Mediteranian countries after WWII.

Sending a man to the Moon

The Alaska Highway

The current implementation of PTC

Building the Phila. - Camden - Lindewold Heavy Rail Line, 1st use of highway funds for rail.

USA’s 1st new Light Rail. San Diego - San Yesidro

Construction of the Astradome, 1st of its kind

China’s, France’s, Germany’s and Spain’s implemenetation of HSR

The move of MIT from BakBay Boston to its Camhridge campus over 100 years ago

The planning and constructinn of Washington, DC over 200 years ago, and the movement of the Capitol from Philadelphia

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Dave, I think we are in the midst of turning the country around right now. I think we will go through about 10 more years of arguing and probably a financial crisis of some sort and we will be fiscally conservative again with both social and domestic spending. In the meantime, I definitely think we need a catch-up Infrastructure program with part of that going to both freight rails and passenger service.

For starters I think we need to get some Federal grants out there and kick some of the Class I’s in the pants to fix some of these regional logjams they seem to have in places (around Chicago specifically but I see Kansas City as being really congested as well possibly a few terminals in the East as well. We really need to have faster coast to coast Intermodal as well as freight service, I think it is still kind of slow right now. Also, would like to see some decent grant money be spent on other than Class I’s, say for example for E&LS to finally pull it’s tracks out of the mud…as well as other regional carriers with worn out rails. Get the track in shape again to 25-40 mph operation with a nice bed of ballast and out of the weeds as well.

As for passenger service I think Amtrak could develope some basic corridors to a speed of possibly 90-110 mph with the intent they would turn them over to a private company to take over and improve the speed faster. I just do not trust Amtrak will ever develop anything higher speed than 110 mph…not efficiently anyways.

Can’t wait for the infrastructure program to get through Congress, it’s comming at some point in the next 2-3 years.

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Most of the recent immigrants are not qualified to work in construction. I have several friends that are contractors; they don’t believe that unskilled immigrants are the solution to their problem.

Many of the immigrants that come across the Texas border, which is close to where I live, work in lawn care or other menial tasks.

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As were a fairly large number of the no-tooth applicants to Mike Fleming’s framing gangs.

I wasn’t saying that the immigrants under Mr. Klepper’s ‘project’ would be trained, but that they would have to be in order for the thing to work as he describes. I don’t think it would be difficult to train the necessary number of ‘migrants’ if they are sufficiently motivated and the methods used to teach are properly conducted and quality of result assured. Whether or not that’s a long-term good idea is another thing entirely. So is the idea of, instead of a targeted infrastructure program, doing a CCC-like make-work program where immigrants fill potholes Detroit-style, or chip away at scaling concrete, or other low-skill things like you see “community-service” drunk drivers doing. I think Mr. Klepper needs to explain how his plan will specifically address these concerns.

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I can think of two instances in Texas where the newbies pushed out the native born.

When I moved to Dallas in the middle 70s, most of the glazers were guys that came from East Dallas or Oak Cliff. One of them was married to a co-worker. By the end of the 80s most of the glazers, so I was told by her, were first generation immigrants.

At least some of the native-born plumbers and electricians in McAllen, TX, which is just across the border, have been replaced by first generation immigrants. I know of two plumbers that moved to Austin because they could not find a decent paying job in McAllen.

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Mr. Klepper also needs to explain how his project wish list would be paid for, and what would be the ROI.

As I mentioned, all of the highway related projects could be paid for by increasing the user fees. The same applies for improvements to the electrical systems, water systems, natrual gas systems, telecommunication systems, etc.

The rub, however, is political will. Neither political party wants to raise fuel taxes, as an example, to pay for enhancements to the nation’s highways.

Readers may remember that Simpson/Bowles recommended, among other things, a gradual increase in the gasoline tax to pay for roadway improvements. If I remember correctly, the recommendation was dead on arrival at the White House.

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Toll roads will be the new norm … no MPG benifit for anyone. Just drove through Chicago and watched as my E-Zpass count was silently drained.

Bring back trade schools … then watch College tuition drop

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To answer the question as to why our European and East Asian trading partners have nice trains and other infrastructure the U.S. doesn’t have, I turn to remarks made by CEO Kevin Conroy of Exact Sciences. He is the “Elon Musk” of cancer screening. Just as Mr. Musk has stated his mission to be solving the CO2 crisis through electric cars, Mr. Conroy’s mission is to prevent people from dying of cancer through early-detection tests.

From his remarks at his recent shareholder meeting, colorectal cancer is the #2 cancer killer behind lung cancer. We could really dial back lung cancer if people didn’t smoke, although don’t kid yourself that lung cancer in non-smokers doesn’t happen. There is some controversy as to whether early detection of cancer actually saves people or merely detects “less aggressive” cancers that may not amount to anything or a person’s immune system can fight off. With colorectal cancer, it is possible to detect “pre-cancerous” polyps and remove them. It is regarded that if we could get “everybody” to be screened, we could save a lot of lives.

The “gold standard” of screening is a colonscopy. Although it is not a “fun thing” and it has its own risks, the powers that be have persuaded a large portion of the over-50 set in the U.S. to submit to it. It is not cheap, either. Under the Affordable Care Act, if you have insurance it has to cover it without a co-pay because the “efficacy panel” determined that this test really saves lives or saves people from the misery of cancer treatment, although the insurance companies have figured out a dodge that if the doctor “finds something”, it becomes “therapy” instead of “screening” and you may be stuck with the full bill with a high-deductible policy. I guess the full bill can be in the 2-4 thousand dollar range.

Mr. Conroy’s company is selling the

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I haven’t chimed in this, not feeling qualified to, but I’m in 100% agreement with rdamon.

Not so much “…bring back trade schools.” they’re out there, but definately increase the amount of them and “push” them aggressively.

In some quarters going to a trade school instead of college has aquired a “stigma,” for lack of a better term. Undeserveably so, one can go to a trade school and pick up a useful skill and make a damn good living at it.

And, although the more egalitarian among us may not agree, everyone isn’t college material, for a variety of reasons.

And let’s be realistic, colleges don’t care how marketable that major you picked is. They just want your money. Once you’re out the door getting a job is your problem, not theirs.

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Neither do many employers. Here’s a perfect example. My older brother just retired as an A320 Captain at a US3 airline. He went into the Army directly from high school to be a helicopter pilot. He flew offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and Persian Gulf before being hired as a regional pilot. He was then hired at a major and was grandfathered in when they merged with his last airline. He had 22K+ flight hours (2.5 years +) and I’d trust him completely. However, now airlines require a 4 year degree. They don’t care what it’s in, as long as you have it. What good does it do? It doesn’t help you fly the plane. In many jobs, intelligence is more important than education.

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Backshop, full disclosure before I go on, I’m not a pilot myself although I’ve always had an interest in aviation. In my readings going back 40 years I’ve gathered airline hiring practices have always been a bit of a mystery, especially to the aviation community itself.

Just guessing, and it’s just a guess, it’s a given that “like hires like.” By this I mean if the people running the airlines are college grad MBA types then they’re most comfortable with others of the same stripe, and have probably never spent any time in a cockpit themselves. HOW the prospective hire got his or her flight training is of secondary concern, either from the military or a civilian flight school.

Either that, or the college degree requirement is just a way to reduce the number of job applicants. As I said, just a guess. Only they know for sure.

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F76, you are correct. My main beef is that there are untold thousands of people out there who are thousands in debt for degrees that they really don’t need for their jobs. Another category is military officers. Why do they need BS degrees. The British seem to do fine sending people to Sandhurst for less than a year. Why do you need a college degree to run an infantry platoon or company?

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Backshop, as an old military guy myself I think I can asnwer the question.

First off, all the youngsters going to Sandhurst are college grads to begin with, so the British Army doesn’t need to go that route.

Now I’ll state right off you don’t need a college degree to command a platoon, a company, a battalion, or probably even a regiment for that matter, it’s strictly a matter of training. It’s when you get up to those high ranking positions that need an ability to see the “Big Picture” in all it’s forms that you need that higher-ed background. And even then just being a service academy graduate isn’t quite enough. Many high-ranking officers have earned masters degrees as an aid to their careers.

If you look at the history of the US Military Academy at West Point you’ll see the school was founded to fill a specific need. There weren’t too many colleges in the country at the time, and none turning out engineers. West Point was founded to fill that need and to turn out polished, competent, “well-rounded” officers who could deal effectively with political office-holders as well as civilians in general which meant it was going to function as a four-year college as well as a military school. The Naval Academy at Annapolis came along later with the same function.

I don’t want to make this a complicated dissertation, but I hope I’ve explained it a bit.

Anyway, that’s our system, it works for us.

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When I was at Purdue in the middle 1960’s they had their ‘Professional Pilot’ cirriculum, which serveral of my dorm mates were enrolled in. I forget what their tuition and ‘lab’ fees were - I just know that they were way, way more than my family could afford. At that time I don’t think there was such a thing as ‘Student Loans’.

While in Florida I became aware of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at Daytona Beach - which I believe offered a degree program in the various aspects of aviation.