It appears that the link in the title for the text “17 Theses on Pete Buttigieg and the Department of Transportation.” actually points to the article "Small business is not the answer."
Do we have a meta-take on where the 'America's infrastructure is crumbling' take came from originally? Can't just be because media types live in New York, can it?
I would suggest that years of wasted funding on broadband internet -- given to Combat et al to build out service -- demonstrate that good internet isn't as simple as throwing money at the industry, either.
The link in the header: “17 Theses on Pete Buttigieg and the Department of Transportation.” goes to the Small business post instead. I think you want this link instead: https://www.slowboring.com/p/pete-buttigieg-dot
It turns out that America has a large number of people with deep expertise in every facet of Transportation Engineering. Traffic analysis, design, construction and maintenance are all well represented in every type of transportation system.. They are engineers and technologists. But can you really trust them if they don't tell you what you want to hear and insist on considering other people's transportation requirements and not just yours?
I've driven all over the US. I've also driven quite a bit in the UK, France, Germany and Italy. Sorry, but I don't find the statistics reflect my experience. Any idea that US roads are on average better than French roads is, IMO, nonsense. And please show me a single US interstate that could safely handle cars going 100 mph, standard on the German autobahn. I have no love for Italian roads (though the driving ethos is fun - bring your A game.)
My anecdotal experience has been that the nicest US roads are where nobody lives/drives. You can definitely hit 100 on stretches of I-10 in Texas (of course, you're 2 hours from Fort Stockton, not exactly a large metropolis)
An interesting thing that's happened over the past 25 years or so is that US speed limits have converged somewhat with Europe. US used to have a 55 mph speed limit, then 65, then sent it back to the states. Now many Western states have 75-80 mph speed limits on Interstates.
This is similar to what you see in Europe. 120 km/h (~75 mph) and 130 km/h (a little over 80 mph) are the most common motorway speed limits.
The UK is still stuck at 70mph max though, and often lower due to variable speed limits.
I haven't anywhere near the experience driving on European roads to debate your larger point, but you asked for a single interstate that can handle 100mph traffic and, well:
Every last owner of a sports car in the bay area will be happy to tell you that I-280 is so nicely banked and maintained that it's all too easy to find oneself doing well north of 95mph without even noticing. :)
A different consideration: while the national situation may not be as bad as it’s made out to be, it is in fact pretty bad in West Virginia. I can only speak anecdotally here, but there’s also some data about it too (https://quotewizard.com/news/posts/states-with-worst-infrastructure). In absolute terms it’s pretty clear that an auto-insurance company might have motivated reasoning to tweak the numbers, but in relative terms, WV having some of the worst infrastructure feels plausible. Anecdotally, the roads are filled with potholes, and sometimes the roads are literally crumbling away. For example, just on the 30 minute drive from my parents’ house to the nearest mall, an entire lane of the road collapsed and fell down a hill a couple years back and it took forever for the state to fix it (and I think there are a few more areas where it’s starting to slip on that road too). I think that, Joe Manchin is very interested in getting a significant chunk of money for roads and bridges for WV, and of course he’s going to get what he wants.
Obviously, there’s probably a formula you could come up with where you shift money to a handful of states and cut it for the rest if you needed to limit your spending here. But with this being an “every senator wants a piece of the pie” type thing, I’m skeptical you’ll actually get much reduction here. I guess you could just shift it toward states with Democratic senators and, like, tell Mississippi to go take a hike but you probably shouldn’t.
I guess I think that a basic feature of infrastructure is that it should be a one timeish capital expenditure with benefits that last for a significant period of time after it is built, and I am made uncomfortable by describing paying people more to care for the elderly and disabled as infrastructure because it's so far outside this paradigm. Why would you lump something that clearly will be an ongoing cost in with things that are one time? Shouldn't words have some meaning? Is it because once all the boomers die there will be less need so it's sort of a short term need? I am for making it more affordable for people to be cared for at home and for paying their caregivers a living wage, I just truly don't understand what benefit comes of calling it infrastructure.
Interesting that Matt describes our roads and bridges and subsequent commutes to be fine when one of the chief issues he raises in One Billion Americans was how commutes have gotten worse because we stopped improving things. There may be new information there, or I simply may have misunderstood that section of the book (my first audiobook in a while), but the contrast seems jarring.
America's commute times are short (because it relies more on cars than all the other countries?) but what that says about the conditions of the roads, I have no idea.
People don't like paying higher taxes and that means they're fine with the roads (or maybe they want to get things for free, or want to eliminate the "waste, fraud and abuse"?)
The average roughness of roads has decreased, but left out is that (mostly state and local) spending on operations and maintenance has increased (but maybe the federal government should cover more of that with zero real interest loans and let states and localities divert money to other crucial things?)
The ASCE raised our grade from D- to D so everything is fine now. Not that I believe them when they say we're in terrible shape so why should I believe them when they say things are better?
The money from increased taxes going to highways etc would be better used for, e.g., child poverty (probably true) -- but it's 5% of the total bill, so perhaps isn't the best target for reallocation.
Well, I guess every post can't be a winner.
Also, this:
>>but the biggest issue is that even as Los Angeles built out their transit infrastructure, they didn’t change land use policy to encourage dense development near the stations.<<
Well, there's some truth here, although LA is taking steps to increase density around transit stations (such as the TOC program). Much more can and should be done. But that's not the biggest issue. Far bigger is that LA is simply really really big geographically. The city itself is 503 square miles, compared to 234 for Chicago. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metropolitan statistical area is 4850 square miles. You'd have to build a *lot* of track to cover extensive areas like these. Unfortunately, most of LA Metro doesn't connect people where they live, and where they work, and other places they want to go. That's one of the reasons why ridership is so low.
I don't think it matters what *fraction* of the city LA Metro connects - all that matters is what *number* of people and potential destinations it connects. 93 miles *should* get you a lot of connections, and it can if they increase density around those stations. (That density will also enable non-transit connections between those nodes and their immediate surroundings.)
I think the fraction does matter. Yes, there are places where major loci of employment are really close to rail stations -- USC is right on the line, and most of Santa Monica is close to the E-Line terminus. Downtown LA has a bunch of stations that serve people who work there. But the LA area is *so* spread out that the chances of building lines that link places where lots of people work and lots of people live are pretty low, until the system is much more widely built out. As it stands now, major places of employment are simply not well-served by rail transit.
Sony Culver City is a 1.3 mile walk from the closest station. UCLA is 2.2 miles away. CBS Television City is 4 miles and Disney/ABC in Burbank is 5 miles.
Some of this will improve over time (e.g., entertainment firms will be occupying the new offices adjacent to the Culver City station, there will be a Westwood/Wilshire station (so UCLA will only be a half mile from the rail line)), but building a robust network sited near large numbers of jobs will take a long time, as will building increased density of housing near stations.
"The ASCE raised our grade from D- to D so everything is fine now. Not that I believe them when they say we're in terrible shape so why should I believe them when they say things are better?"
They are subject matter experts who overvalue what they have to offer but are likely to be directionally correct. It's like the public health recommendations for COVID: almost always too strict but skilled enough in interpreting the data well to move in the right direction
A smart guy the other day said the following: Remember: the ecological fallacy isn't a fallacy if it supports a political argument whose conclusion you agree with.
I note that the US has an enormous amount of roads and bridges and such. And on average it is pretty good. Odd thing about bridges, if they become unsafe to use or worse catastrophically fail then you have a whole lot of other useless infrastructure until you fix or replace it. Now speaking as one of those pessimistic engineering dudes who knows a teensy bit about structural rehab I think the money allocated for fixing what urgently requires fixing is appropriate but probably not for the reason you think. The idea that you could turn this over to something generically called a construction company is wrong. Maybe for resurfacing roads or repairing expansion joints. But not for structural rehab which requires whole different techniques and engineering and skill sets and equipment. That is a specialist business and right now the US does not have enough of that infrastructure to fix THE infrastructure they have before them that urgently needs fixing. I think the funding is adequate for scaling up to start the job.
I'm worried that we're once again focused on the "last war" and not true upcoming realities. The budget for repairing and upgrading our electrical infrastructure is a step in the right direction, but with impending self-driving car technology coming (never as soon as Elon says, but still...), shouldn't we be planning for THAT? The cost of Uber/Lyft/TeslaRide will then be competitive with public transport costs (since no need to pay a driver), and why would I spend two hours on public transit when I can spend half that in a self-driven car for my commute for around the same money? Roads will become more important again, public transport less so.
It appears that the link in the title for the text “17 Theses on Pete Buttigieg and the Department of Transportation.” actually points to the article "Small business is not the answer."
The crappy LA metro that nobody rides does wonders for reducing traffic congestion: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.104.9.2763
Do we have a meta-take on where the 'America's infrastructure is crumbling' take came from originally? Can't just be because media types live in New York, can it?
I would suggest that years of wasted funding on broadband internet -- given to Combat et al to build out service -- demonstrate that good internet isn't as simple as throwing money at the industry, either.
You cite a study from the Hamilton Project. You've probably already seen plenty of left-wing criticism of the Hamilton Project, but just in case you haven't: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-shell-game-of-the-economic-elites-hamilton-project-2/
The link in the header: “17 Theses on Pete Buttigieg and the Department of Transportation.” goes to the Small business post instead. I think you want this link instead: https://www.slowboring.com/p/pete-buttigieg-dot
The evidence Matt shows regarding bridges is the number of collapses. Really? There must be better and more helpful data out there.
There is. Lots and lots of it. Testing bridges to failure is usually a bad idea for the people on the bridge.
Well, you're wrong about that. I've read the authoritative text on how they test bridges:
https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/aakfde/determining_the_load_limit_of_bridges/
It turns out that America has a large number of people with deep expertise in every facet of Transportation Engineering. Traffic analysis, design, construction and maintenance are all well represented in every type of transportation system.. They are engineers and technologists. But can you really trust them if they don't tell you what you want to hear and insist on considering other people's transportation requirements and not just yours?
I've driven all over the US. I've also driven quite a bit in the UK, France, Germany and Italy. Sorry, but I don't find the statistics reflect my experience. Any idea that US roads are on average better than French roads is, IMO, nonsense. And please show me a single US interstate that could safely handle cars going 100 mph, standard on the German autobahn. I have no love for Italian roads (though the driving ethos is fun - bring your A game.)
My anecdotal experience has been that the nicest US roads are where nobody lives/drives. You can definitely hit 100 on stretches of I-10 in Texas (of course, you're 2 hours from Fort Stockton, not exactly a large metropolis)
An interesting thing that's happened over the past 25 years or so is that US speed limits have converged somewhat with Europe. US used to have a 55 mph speed limit, then 65, then sent it back to the states. Now many Western states have 75-80 mph speed limits on Interstates.
This is similar to what you see in Europe. 120 km/h (~75 mph) and 130 km/h (a little over 80 mph) are the most common motorway speed limits.
The UK is still stuck at 70mph max though, and often lower due to variable speed limits.
I haven't anywhere near the experience driving on European roads to debate your larger point, but you asked for a single interstate that can handle 100mph traffic and, well:
Every last owner of a sports car in the bay area will be happy to tell you that I-280 is so nicely banked and maintained that it's all too easy to find oneself doing well north of 95mph without even noticing. :)
Fair enough. And TBH I did break 100 on a North Carolina freeway when my daughter was sick at school. (She was fine.)
A different consideration: while the national situation may not be as bad as it’s made out to be, it is in fact pretty bad in West Virginia. I can only speak anecdotally here, but there’s also some data about it too (https://quotewizard.com/news/posts/states-with-worst-infrastructure). In absolute terms it’s pretty clear that an auto-insurance company might have motivated reasoning to tweak the numbers, but in relative terms, WV having some of the worst infrastructure feels plausible. Anecdotally, the roads are filled with potholes, and sometimes the roads are literally crumbling away. For example, just on the 30 minute drive from my parents’ house to the nearest mall, an entire lane of the road collapsed and fell down a hill a couple years back and it took forever for the state to fix it (and I think there are a few more areas where it’s starting to slip on that road too). I think that, Joe Manchin is very interested in getting a significant chunk of money for roads and bridges for WV, and of course he’s going to get what he wants.
Obviously, there’s probably a formula you could come up with where you shift money to a handful of states and cut it for the rest if you needed to limit your spending here. But with this being an “every senator wants a piece of the pie” type thing, I’m skeptical you’ll actually get much reduction here. I guess you could just shift it toward states with Democratic senators and, like, tell Mississippi to go take a hike but you probably shouldn’t.
I guess I think that a basic feature of infrastructure is that it should be a one timeish capital expenditure with benefits that last for a significant period of time after it is built, and I am made uncomfortable by describing paying people more to care for the elderly and disabled as infrastructure because it's so far outside this paradigm. Why would you lump something that clearly will be an ongoing cost in with things that are one time? Shouldn't words have some meaning? Is it because once all the boomers die there will be less need so it's sort of a short term need? I am for making it more affordable for people to be cared for at home and for paying their caregivers a living wage, I just truly don't understand what benefit comes of calling it infrastructure.
I don't think the roads and bridges thing is just an NYC-centric issue. I live in Seattle, and it seems like our bridges are very much not fine (the West Seattle bridge is only 36 years old and was shut down last year due to cracks) and I am reminded every day when I open up the Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/delayed-repairs-threaten-washington-state-bridges-and-highways-will-lawmakers-act-this-year/
Interesting that Matt describes our roads and bridges and subsequent commutes to be fine when one of the chief issues he raises in One Billion Americans was how commutes have gotten worse because we stopped improving things. There may be new information there, or I simply may have misunderstood that section of the book (my first audiobook in a while), but the contrast seems jarring.
I confess I don't get this post:
America's commute times are short (because it relies more on cars than all the other countries?) but what that says about the conditions of the roads, I have no idea.
People don't like paying higher taxes and that means they're fine with the roads (or maybe they want to get things for free, or want to eliminate the "waste, fraud and abuse"?)
The average roughness of roads has decreased, but left out is that (mostly state and local) spending on operations and maintenance has increased (but maybe the federal government should cover more of that with zero real interest loans and let states and localities divert money to other crucial things?)
The ASCE raised our grade from D- to D so everything is fine now. Not that I believe them when they say we're in terrible shape so why should I believe them when they say things are better?
The money from increased taxes going to highways etc would be better used for, e.g., child poverty (probably true) -- but it's 5% of the total bill, so perhaps isn't the best target for reallocation.
Well, I guess every post can't be a winner.
Also, this:
>>but the biggest issue is that even as Los Angeles built out their transit infrastructure, they didn’t change land use policy to encourage dense development near the stations.<<
Well, there's some truth here, although LA is taking steps to increase density around transit stations (such as the TOC program). Much more can and should be done. But that's not the biggest issue. Far bigger is that LA is simply really really big geographically. The city itself is 503 square miles, compared to 234 for Chicago. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metropolitan statistical area is 4850 square miles. You'd have to build a *lot* of track to cover extensive areas like these. Unfortunately, most of LA Metro doesn't connect people where they live, and where they work, and other places they want to go. That's one of the reasons why ridership is so low.
I don't think it matters what *fraction* of the city LA Metro connects - all that matters is what *number* of people and potential destinations it connects. 93 miles *should* get you a lot of connections, and it can if they increase density around those stations. (That density will also enable non-transit connections between those nodes and their immediate surroundings.)
I think the fraction does matter. Yes, there are places where major loci of employment are really close to rail stations -- USC is right on the line, and most of Santa Monica is close to the E-Line terminus. Downtown LA has a bunch of stations that serve people who work there. But the LA area is *so* spread out that the chances of building lines that link places where lots of people work and lots of people live are pretty low, until the system is much more widely built out. As it stands now, major places of employment are simply not well-served by rail transit.
Sony Culver City is a 1.3 mile walk from the closest station. UCLA is 2.2 miles away. CBS Television City is 4 miles and Disney/ABC in Burbank is 5 miles.
Some of this will improve over time (e.g., entertainment firms will be occupying the new offices adjacent to the Culver City station, there will be a Westwood/Wilshire station (so UCLA will only be a half mile from the rail line)), but building a robust network sited near large numbers of jobs will take a long time, as will building increased density of housing near stations.
"The ASCE raised our grade from D- to D so everything is fine now. Not that I believe them when they say we're in terrible shape so why should I believe them when they say things are better?"
They are subject matter experts who overvalue what they have to offer but are likely to be directionally correct. It's like the public health recommendations for COVID: almost always too strict but skilled enough in interpreting the data well to move in the right direction
The LA vs. Chicago thing is also vehicle ownership rates.
I can't find another more recent study I saw on this but the link below estimates that in 2016:
27.5% of Chicago households were without a vehicle vs.
12.2% for LA, 10.1% for Long Beach, just 5% for Orange County
This huge disparity creates a way higher base rider load for the CTA.
https://www.governing.com/archive/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-by-city-map.html
A smart guy the other day said the following: Remember: the ecological fallacy isn't a fallacy if it supports a political argument whose conclusion you agree with.
I note that the US has an enormous amount of roads and bridges and such. And on average it is pretty good. Odd thing about bridges, if they become unsafe to use or worse catastrophically fail then you have a whole lot of other useless infrastructure until you fix or replace it. Now speaking as one of those pessimistic engineering dudes who knows a teensy bit about structural rehab I think the money allocated for fixing what urgently requires fixing is appropriate but probably not for the reason you think. The idea that you could turn this over to something generically called a construction company is wrong. Maybe for resurfacing roads or repairing expansion joints. But not for structural rehab which requires whole different techniques and engineering and skill sets and equipment. That is a specialist business and right now the US does not have enough of that infrastructure to fix THE infrastructure they have before them that urgently needs fixing. I think the funding is adequate for scaling up to start the job.
I'm worried that we're once again focused on the "last war" and not true upcoming realities. The budget for repairing and upgrading our electrical infrastructure is a step in the right direction, but with impending self-driving car technology coming (never as soon as Elon says, but still...), shouldn't we be planning for THAT? The cost of Uber/Lyft/TeslaRide will then be competitive with public transport costs (since no need to pay a driver), and why would I spend two hours on public transit when I can spend half that in a self-driven car for my commute for around the same money? Roads will become more important again, public transport less so.