Who wants to hear some random-ass infrastructure stuff?
1. When Carmageddons are predicted (because of construction, or a vital piece is taken out due to some disaster) they almost never happen. Why? It's called Braess's Paradox.
Atlanta's dealing with the aftermath of a fire that took out an overpass on I-85 at GA 400. Greater Atlanta's terrible land-use policies and overbuilt (yet inadequate!) road infrastructure gives the region spectacular traffic, and when the bridge collapsed, it's been assumed the traffic would become even more nightmarish.
It hasn't and it likely won't.
People adjust, which is what Braess's paradox postulates, when used in a transportation context. They avoid the area, find alternate routes, or abandon their cars for rapid transit. A lot of people have discovered MARTA for the first time. Unfortunately, when the transport link is restored on I-85, it's unlikely most of these people will stick with MARTA, because driving is king in America and that ain't changing anytime within the next one to three generations--even with "peak oil" and the climate catastrophe. One will note much of the tech world's solution to "peak oil" is "electric cars" not "revamp land-use, zoning, and planning so that rapid transit is more efficient." It is what it is.
2. Human beings have an average round-trip commute time that's universal, going back to the Neolithic. That time is one hour.
No, really, it's true. It's called Marchetti's constant (although Cesare Marchetti attributes the finding to someone else--Yacov Zahavi, a transportation engineer who worked for the World Bank).
How we travel may change, and how we plan our towns and cities may change, but this constant remains remarkably consistent. One can see this even in US Census data---the average American one-way commute is about 28 minutes and this really has not changed since these data have been collected. Data from the (for now) United Kingdom also confirms this. Japan has an extreme example of this. The bullet train has turned much of Honshu into a Tokyo suburb (and Honshu is not small), because what's an hour out from the city center is so much more distant.
Please note that these are averages. It is a popular topic in transport journalism about the horrors of mega commutes when the data in reality shows only a minority of folks have these commutes. People who have commutes that are longer than 30 minutes are not average or remotely typical, or even a majority most anywhere in the world. I'm including myself in this, as my roundtrip commute is 75 to 80 minutes by bus every day, plus a 20 minute one-way walk home Fridays from April to October. Mega-commutes are a lifestyle choice too--I could have chosen to stay single over 8 years ago and continue with my --get this---30 minute one-way walk commute life. But, I didn't. Oh well!
It also, for me at least, leads me to question "we must add lanes to relieve congestion" which probably will be the bulk of whatever infrastructure "shovel-ready only" push that comes out of 45's little regime. I'll be fair here and note I'd question it if he'd lost and Clinton was proposing such a push (she was going to), or if Bernie won and was proposing such a thing (he did, and I questioned it then too). I really don't think billions of dollars should be spent to widen a highway to shave 2 minutes off of Becky Suburbamom’s 27-minute one-way commute to work from Sidewalkless Acres---but that's what always happens, that's what most DOTs have done in the past and that's what they'll will do in the future. Oh, and the ongoing maintenance costs won't be addressed. (
oh and as a non-driver--on purpose btw, not because I can't afford it but because I loathe driving---it's truly onerous, I chuckle at congestion complaints. When I sit in traffic on my bus, I go back to sleep or I read a book. When drivers sit in traffic I see a lot of tantrums from my bus window—providing I'm even awake!)
3. That last snarky aside leads me to our next random-ass thing of the day, one that very much is an unpopular opinion. I think that the American Society of Civil Engineers reports that grade US infrastructure are kind of a scam.
Yep, I said it.
I'm pretty sure a bunch of people have now immediately stopped reading and are on their way to the comment box down below to scream at me, so they probably aren't reading the next part.
- - Is it true America's infrastructure is crumbling due to its increasing age? YES
- - Is it true that broadly, the US doesn't maintain its national networks of infrastructure? YES
ASCE's solution is to throw a lot more money at it. They are, after all, a lobbying group, and the fundamental purpose of lobbying groups is to get more money and legislative support for the thing they support.
Consider this though:
- - Is it true that we don't pay for the full cost of infrastructure? YES
- - Is it true that a dollar spent on infrastructure does not get you $1.50 back as claimed? YES
- - Is it true we overbuilt? YES
- - Is it true we do zero cost-benefit analysis for anything we build? YES
In recent months I've become a great fan of Strong Towns, and well, that's a big reason why I think this is a bit of a big ole' scam. Strong Towns wasn't started by some NIMBY. It was started by a frustrated civil engineer who got pretty tired of the bullshit.
But, nope, we don't pay the full cost of infrastructure, not me as a bus user and not most of you as car drivers, and while I can and would pay more for the bus, drivers will tantrum when they're asked to pay more for driving (either via gas taxes or tolling on interstates. Btw I don’t really support tolling).
And nope, the investments made on infrastructure don't come back. Because we don't pay for them and don’t want to pay for them. You get a fraction of it back and then you're stuck with the maintenance costs which no one fully funds. And as for overbuilt? Yep. Water systems that deliver drinking water in many cities are oversized and difficult to pay for when things go wrong. Roadway networks encourage sprawl. We build high-speed frontage roads, the dumbest transportation concept ever outside of hyperloop and personal jetpacks. Most US cities tore down portions their central business districts to put up parking lots and freeways. Even commercial real estate is overbuilt---and that bubble is slowly but surely popping. That's all paid for out of insufficient funds, even after the malls are abandoned, which they increasingly are. This bothers very few people, which is why so many fall for ASCE's propaganda. Gotta note that in the US when rail infrastructure is no longer necessary, the railroads usually go to the Surface Transportation Board to get it abandoned (whether they should---that’s another story). Bit strident there? Yup, sure is. Like Chuck Marohn, I'm a bit sick of the bullshit.
When Europeans build something, they do it because there's a cost-benefit to it (although Berlin's airport fiascos are an exception to this). Even the UK, despite their apparent interest in emulating doing things the way Americans do things, do this. Crossrail in London would not be built if there was no reason to do it. The Paris Metro isn't building more lines for shits and giggles. Someone crunched the numbers and found there was a real economic benefit to do so. Europeans don’t build our equivalent of the interstate system--and when they do, they toll them. We build things for no real reason although we'll maintain a convenient fiction that we did need to build that thing, widen that other thing, and so on. How much in federal funds went into widening I-10 in Houston to 26 lanes in spots when that money could have provided a needed transportation link in West Virginia? That’s what I’m talking about. Becky Suburbamom gets 26 lanes to choose from in Houston for her commute (which didn’t help, by the way, the 26 lanes, if anything traffic got worse thanks to induced demand) and the Appalachian Highway system remains incomplete.
I have no real solution for this, beeteedubs, but Strong Towns has a rich library of articles for you to read (like this one, on what to do with sprawl!)--and you should. It’s even got podcasts if you prefer listening over reading, and its lessons are applicable in big cities on the coasts and small towns in the interior West, or, basically, everywhere.
4. Last thing---there is a new report that basically notes pedestrian deaths are on the rise, and blames, among other things, "distracted walking"---a euphemism for texting and walking. Yet the states with the highest numbers of pedestrian deaths do not have robust pedestrian infrastructure, like Florida. One will also note that Florida's population boom which began in 1960 continues unabated, and one will also note that when the economy improved, people got back in their cars. The thinkpiece writers who thought Americans were abandoning their cars--lol nope. Not happening.
Anyway, once I digest that report, I'll write a deeper diary on it, but my brief take from my skim is "this is some propaganda bullshit to deflect from our shitty road design."
Anyway, that's all for now.
oh, and META: lot of complaints lately about what's written and who's writing it. Valid or not, one should be the change one wants to see in the world, and if you don't like what's being written, write your own stuff and cultivate a readership. We still get to write unlimited diaries in a day, so maybe get to it?
also more META: any artists out there? I would like nice headers for the three groups I run here: DKos PA, Daily Kos Weather Center, and Infrastructure Kos. and I just don’t have the talent to do this myself I’m not asking for charity either---if you can accept paypal, we can work out payment for ‘em.