Infrastructure in the News: February 28, 2011

The New York Times reports on a Hamilton Project study that urges states to fix old roads instead of building new ones and The Atlantic writes on the challenges of building out America's infrastructure "from the ground up." Read more in this Infrastructure in the News.

National News

New York Times: Fix Old Roads, Instead of Constructing New Ones, Report Urges
On Friday morning, the Hamilton Project will release a few new proposals for helping fiscally struggling state and local governments keep their roads, bridges and other infrastructure in decent shape. One of the proposals fits a theme I've been writing about recently: making government programs less wasteful.

The Atlantic: How to Rebuild U.S. Infrastructure From the Ground Up
As the U.S. works to rebuild and re-orient its economy, infrastructure should be near the top of the "to-do" list. It appears that government and business leaders understand the paramount importance of infrastructure to maximizing economic growth and opportunity, so the question is how to proceed.

Associated Press: Stimulus funds help wire rural homes for Internet
Bolstered by billions in federal stimulus money, an effort to expand broadband Internet access to rural areas is under way, an ambitious 21st-century infrastructure project with parallels to the New Deal electrification of the nation's hinterlands in the 1930s and 1940s.

Newsweek: George Will: Why Liberals Love Trains
Remarkably widespread derision has greeted the Obama administration’s damn-the-arithmetic-full-speed-ahead proposal to spend $53 billion more (after the $8 billion in stimulus money and $2.4 billion in enticements to 23 states) in the next six years pursuant to the president’s loopy goal of giving “80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail.”

Journal Times: Why has U.S. lagged on high-speed rail?
Dear EarthTalk: Vice President Joe Biden announced a commitment by the Obama administration of $53 billion to high-speed rail. Isn't it about time? Why is the U.S. so far behind other nations in developing environmentally friendly public transportation? - Diane A., Boston

The Weekly Standard: Interstate 2.0
Congress is currently debating reauthorization of the federal surface transportation program, something it does every six years or so. In response to concerns that the federal government is too large and intrusive, many fiscal conservatives, led by Senator Jim DeMint and Representative Jeff Flake, support devolving both the program and the federal fuel taxes that support it to the states.

The Wall Street Journal: No Talk of Protests as Democratic Governors Meet With Obama
Transportation infrastructure and community colleges — not the protests in several states over public employee union rights — were on the agenda when a group of Democratic governors met Friday with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Washington Post: What government is for
Third, government should promote economic growth. That means maintaining ports, roads, rails, subways and airports; educating the next generation; and supporting science. But grandiose projects such as trips to Mars or high-speed rail to Las Vegas will have to wait.

New York Times: How Budget Battles Go Without the Earmarks
The fact that Congress remains a spending disagreement or two away from shutting down the government no doubt strikes some as remarkable. But there is another extraordinary aspect to the fiscal clash unfolding on Capitol Hill: earmarks have disappeared from the budgetary landscape.

Huffington Post: Why We Need To Make It in America When We Build Our 21st Century Infrastructure
In his State of the Union address on January 25, President Obama said we must "out-build the rest of the world," because without modern infrastructure, we cannot keep up in the 21st century. 

Infrastructurist: Raising the Gas Tax Would Lower U.S. Economic Vulnerability
Few people listened when the deficit commission suggested raising the gas tax 15 cents by 2015. But if Congress is to authorize a transportation program anywhere near President Obama’s $556 million budget request, the money will have to come from somewhere. Even the Chamber of Commerce and the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, in what the New York Times described as a "rare joint share of support", think a higher gas tax could be good for the country.

Transportation Infrastructure: Does The Spoke and Hub Transit System Still Work?
Transit systems in New York, Chicago, and many other cities were designed a hundred years ago to get people in and out of downtowns, where most of the employment was.  A new report from the Center for and Urban Future in New York suggests that’s outdated, and that many people now live and work in the boroughs outside Manhattan

DOT Blog: President's proposal gives cities greater flexibility
When the Obama Administration released its proposed 2012 budget, U.S. Conference of Mayors

President Elizabeth Kautz (Burnsville, MN) said, “With 85 percent of the people in this country living in cities and metropolitan areas, we believe the best way to "out-innovate, “out-educate” and “out-build" is to make investments that foster growth."

Nashville Business Journal: Mass transit draws unlikely allies
This morning, in the U.S. headquarters of a major auto manufacturer, people were talking about ... trains? That’s right. Not only trains — high-speed rail, specifically — but also street cars, high-speed busses, and, yes, also cars.

World Resources Institute: Protecting Forests to Protect Water in the U.S. South
The World Resources Institute (WRI) investigates this potential in Forests For Water: Exploring Payments For Watershed Services in the US South. The issue brief provides an overview of how businesses and water utilities in the United States and Latin America are pursuing upstream forest conservation as a cost-effective means of ensuring clean water supplies. It also suggests how many of these approaches could be applicable in the southern United States.

Trucks at Work Blog: The highway infrastructure debate
For starters, we’ve all long known that the U.S. highway network – roads and bridges alike – is crumbling due to its age plus heavier amounts of car and truck traffic considered within its original design parameters.

The Barr Code: The magic elixir of high-speed rail
Fix the economy?  High-speed rail.  Cure transportation gridlock?  High-speed rail.  Restore American entrepreneurship?  High-speed rail.  Solve America’s health-care problems?  High-speed rail.

State News

California High Speed Rail Blog: California Roads Are Massively Subsidized
Those percentages are based on funding between 1995 and 2007. California spent a total of $190 billion over that time. And as you can see, only 39% came from user revenues. Perhaps it’s as high as 57% if all of the federal funding came from the federal gas tax, but even then that’s just barely more than half.

KCET-FM: SoCal Focus: Transit Group Urges Metro to Combine Valley Projects
Several members of Congress were in Los Angeles Wednesday for a meeting about the federal transportation bill. Although the legislation will affect the country as a whole, the field hearing gave an opportunity for local politicians to sound off and give suggestions on topics ranging from freight movement to infrastructure funding.

San Diego Union-Tribune: Billions proposed for bike lanes, pedestrian-friendly streets
Transportation planners have proposed spending $2.58 billion building bicycle paths and improving streets for pedestrians in San Diego County over the next 40 years.

The Boston Globe: Conn. governor stumps for federal cash while in DC
Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy took a different tack from his Republican predecessor and kicked off a long weekend visit to Washington, D.C. on Friday by personally lobbying for more federal aid, including a $100 million share of the $2.4 billion in federal transportation funding the Florida governor has refused for a high-speed rail project in his state

CNN: A reprieve for high-speed rail in Florida
Florida Gov. Rick Scott rejected $2.4 billion in federal funding last week for a high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando, but the project has not run off the tracks yet. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood met with Scott Friday morning to discuss the plan in an attempt to keep it alive.

Transportation Nation: No Deal: Florida High Speed rail Lost In Space
Florida Governor Rick Scott will make no formal announcement about his final decision to kill the Tampa-to-Orlando high speed rail line, his spokesperson told the Tampa Tribune. It seems that the people of Florida and the nation will have to settle for a brief interview Scott gave to a local Fox News affiliate. “I’m not convinced that project is a good project,” he said. “There’s a significant risk of cost overruns for construction. Historically that’s what’s happened with those projects.”

Florida Independent: What next for Florida's rail systems?
In the wake of Gov. Rick Scott’s decision to stick to his guns on rejecting funds for high-speed rail, the Palm Beach Post that U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has extended the deadline, allowing the federal government more time to overcome Scott’s objection that the project would put Florida taxpayer dollars at risk.  reported

WPEC: Feds give Gov. Rick Scott another week to consider high-speed rail funding 
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has given Florida Gov. Rick Scott another week to reconsider his decision to turn down $2.4 billion in federal money for the project after the two met Friday in Washington, D.C.

Michigan Live: Investing in our infrastructure can't wait
When I talk to students from other states, one of the first things they comment on are Michigan's poor roads. As the car capital of the world, our roads were once the envy of the nation. Today, Michigan is a pothole hell.

Nashua Telegraph: Rail transit money at risk
More than $4 million in federal funds is ready to fuel passenger train service across New Hampshire. But with a repeal bill pending at the Statehouse, planners remain stuck in neutral.

Wall Street Journal: Budget hearing for NY state transportation issues
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's choice to head the state Department of Transportation is scheduled to go before lawmakers in Albany.

Streetsblog New York City: NYC Asks Banks For Ideas on Parking Privatization
New York City is moving forward with possible plans to privatize its on-street parking to some degree. An RFP released last week by the city’s Economic Development Corporation asks investment banks to submit their best ideas for privatizing city assets. Parking tops the list of assets the city is interested in contracting with the private sector over. (Large pieces of transportation infrastructure are also on the list).

Streetsblog New York City: To Stay Connected to Jobs, New Yorkers Need Better Bus Service
Over the last decades, the economic geography of New York City has begun to shift. While Midtown and Lower Manhattan remain job centers without peer, more and more of the city’s jobs are located outside of the central business districts. As employment shifts into the other boroughs, however, the transit system hasn’t shifted with it. That means longer waits and worse service for many New Yorkers, especially for low- and middle-income workers, according to a new report from Center for an Urban Future.

Transportation Nation: Report Says Improving Outer Borough Bus Service Is Key To NYC Job Growth
The report says that over the past two decades, the number of outer borough residents commuting from borough to borough or within their borough has been increasing much faster than the number who make the more traditional trip into Manhattan’s business districts. Because the subways are generally oriented toward moving riders to and from Manhattan, many outer borough residents with outer borough jobs take the bus.

Penn Live: We're still waiting for Pa. transportation funding solution
Given the scope of the funding problem — Pennsylvania’s Transportation Commission holds our state’s funding gap for PennDOT, public transit and local roads at $3.5 billion annually — it is unrealistic to believe that market-driven private sector investment will solve the entire problem or even a significant portion of it.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 200 protest transit cuts at rally
A rally Saturday to protest Port Authority transit cuts brought out more than 200 people in McKeesport and Port Vue, whose bus service would be eliminated next month.

Texas Insider: Make Transportation Funding a Priority
The Legislature’s top priority for this legislative session is to pass a balanced state budget for the next biennium.  My top priority for this session is to do so without creating new taxes or passing any increases in existing taxes. In order to achieve this goal, the Legislature must prioritize its spending and focus on essential state services, such as  transportation

Crosscut: Washington state receives high-speed rail money
Washington state has finally been guaranteed $590 million in federal high-speed rail (HSR) funding, which red tape in the other Washington had been holding up for more than a year, according to a press release from the State Department of Transportation's Rail and Marine Office.

The Transport Politic: Expanding Downtown
Washington, D.C. is a lucky city: Its downtown has been filled up with new construction over the past few decades to such an extent that it has virtually no space for new office buildings. Some, like Matt Yglesias, have suggested that one way to resolve this problem would be to increase densities by ridding the city of its height limit, which in essence makes it impossible to build structures in the city that are over about 10 stories.