Fast-Acting Transit
Alec MacGillis and Michael D. Shear have an interesting story about tension between different visions of infrastructure spending and, in particular, the difficulty of combining a transformative vision of infrastructure with the need for stimulus to be fast-acting. To make a long story short, no matter how cool it would be to build a bullet train to Chicago, you can’t do it in 12 months. To make it longer:
On the campaign trail, Obama said he would “rebuild America” with an “infrastructure bank” run by a new board that would award $60 billion over a decade to projects such as high-speed rail to take the country in a more energy-efficient direction. But the crumbling economy, while giving impetus to big spending plans, has also put a new emphasis on projects that can be started immediately — “use it or lose it,” Obama said last week — and created a clear tension between the need to create jobs fast and the desire for a lasting legacy. [...]
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is proud that his city was able to quickly rebuild the Interstate 35 bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007 while making sure to include capacity for a future transit line on it. But he worries that many of the road and bridge upgrades around the country will not be done in a similarly farsighted way, given the time pressures.
“The quickest things we can do may not be the ones that have the most significant long-term impact on the green economy,” he said. “Unless we push a transit investment, this will end up being a stimulus package that rebalances our transportation strategy toward roads and away from [what] we need to get off our addiction to oil.”
Rybak notes, it’s completely possible to navigate this tension, you just need to be smart about it. One example that comes to mind of pro-transit stimulus that would be extremely fast acting would be to tell cities that you’re creating a pool of funds that will be available to finance expansions of bus services. Because it costs money to operate a bus (you need to pay the driver, etc.) pretty much everywhere is offering less bus service than they have the capacity to deliver. But given extra money, you could do the logistical arrangement very quickly. I think that expanding service on metros, light rails, and commuter rail systems would be a little more complicated but still easy to do on the stimulus time frame.
One issue that comes up in the article is that things will likely go much better in this regard if money is offered directly to cities or transit agencies rather than all being laundered through state capitols. State government is almost always structured so as to bias political power away from large cities, so structuring stimulus funds entirely through state governments will probably result in a lot of spawl-enabling investments rather than investments that allow us to use our already-build areas more intensively and efficiently.
38 Responses to “Fast-Acting Transit”
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December 15th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
One issue that comes up in the article is that things will likely go much better in this regard if money is offered directly to cities or transit agencies rather than all being laundered through state capitols.
I heartily agree with this as long as we’re talking about the infrastructure portion of stimulus. But there also needs to be a sort of block grant/revenue sharing aspect (probably a huge sum of money giving abysmal tax collections) geared toward enabling state/local governments to avoid mass layoffs and deep cuts in things like education and healthcare. This part of the Obama stimulus package does — I would argue — needs to be laundered through the states. There are umpteen million municipalities in the US, and rolling out a stimulus package for them would be a logistical nightmare otherwise.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I don’t know. Though I can’t quite prove it, I think sprawl exhaustion was a big trigger in the housing market collapse. There were signs that many places had spun out as far as the market would bear in 2005-2006. Concerns about gas prices, commute times, a kind of super suburban ennui, and so forth were real concerns even before everything fell apart. I’m not sure there are all that many new-sprawl projects on the table in many places. Phoenix, Las Vegas, Tampa, and the rest of the sun belt cities need a housing bubble to prop up real estate ventures and no stimulus is going to resurrect that nonsense again any time soon.
That said, look at where a lot of the infrastructure money will be going: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and New Jersey are the poster children states for aging infrastructure with repair projects planned at the shovel-ready stage. Fixing up these old bridges and roads will have a systemic stimulus effect without encouraging any sprawl. Rail projects would be nicer, of course, because most of the material is domestically available, especially steel; while roads and bridges are petro-dependent projects no matter what sort of vehicles eventually drive on them that will ship a lot of the infrastructure money overseas.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
It occurs to me that one benefit of a crash program on bullet trains that such spending would not displace spending that is already in the pipeline. One problem with trying to use public works to stimulate aggregate spending in the economy is that the federal government operates through state and locakl governments. If it looks as if the feds will pays for projects the S&L folks were going to do anyway, they immediately halt them in hopes that the Feds will pay for them. Thus at best, federal speinding simply displaces S&L spending; at worst, total spending falls while the S&L folks wait to see what will happen. But since there are no bullet train projects underway, federal spending in this area will not displace S&L spending.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
I also wonder if much thought has been given to what formulas we’re going to use to divvy up all of this stuff. Given political realities, there’s going to be some waste — that’s just unavoidable. But I hope we don’t go down the path of “he who has the most seniority gets the most dough.” I would argue that money ought to be distributed on a straight per capita basis. True, that’s not the most rational and optimal way to do things. But I suspect it is the best way to do things from the perspective of waste minimization.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
That said, look at where a lot of the infrastructure money will be going: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and New Jersey.
RoboticGhost: What makes you think “a lot” of the money will go to such places — just the fact that these are large states? That’s what I’m getting at in my (#4) comment above. It may well be that, say, New Jersey’s infrastructure needs objectively merit more infrastructure money (on a per capita basis) than, say, New Mexico. But, political realities will probably mean New Mexico gets more than its infrastructure objectively merit, and New Jersey less. That’s why I favor giving out the cash on a straight-line per capita basis: to prevent New Jersey or Massachusetts getting screwed over any more than they have to.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Mass transit plans always collide with pandering to the public wish for low gas prices. If you want mass transit/conservation fine – raise marginal carbon fuel costs to consumers. Anything else is just nonsense leading to transit infrastructure that can’t pay its own way because of low ridership.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Mass transit plans always collide with pandering to the public wish for low gas prices.
Or, as I like to put it, failure to put a price on carbon is the moral equivalent of not taking action on climate change. Everything else is just nibbling at the edges.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
RoboticGhost: What makes you think “a lot” of the money will go to such places — just the fact that these are large states?
When the bridge collapsed in Minnesota there were a lot of studies launched about aging infrastructure around the country and those states got the most mentions. Its not like there is much debate about where the oldest and crappiest bridges, sewer systems, and roads are. I agree with your larger point, but I don’t think Congress will specifically allocate the money in the legislation. From what I’ve read its supposed to be a blank check ala TARP for the administration to spend where it sees fit.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
From what I’ve read its supposed to be a blank check ala TARP for the administration to spend where it sees fit.
I see. That’s good news if it turns out to be how they do it.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
1) I still think unthinking , hugely expensive upgrades to the transportation infrastructure –as an economic stimulus — will hurt the economy more than it will help it. Because it’s continuing the Bush policy of wasting money we don’t have.
2) As I noted, transferring INFORMATION instead of fat-ass people is FAR more efficient and gives far greater bang for the buck. Deploy broadband extensively and quickly– there’s a shitload of unused dark fiber out there. Push ,via tax credits and penalties , business adoption of Web Conferencing over business travel. That could speed up our rate of business operations/innovation by a factor of 20 at least.
Start with government and defense contractors. Plus IMMEDIATELY give reductions in petroleum consumption and green house gases.
3) As I noted, transport infrastructure improvements are in DIRECT CONTRADICTION to the needs of economic stimulus. The places that badly need infrastructure upgrades are the very places where the local economies are booming — because the local population has increased as people moved in to get jobs.
In contrast, transportation infrastructure upgrades in places where the local economy is crashing are a waste — the equivalent of building a Bridge to Nowhere. Because those locations are LOSING population and will lose more as people move away.
Obviously , it’s more complicated than that. But our transport spending is NOT done in a rational way — it’s done like a pack of pigs pushing to get to the trough. With some backwards, rural shitholes getting far more than they deserve just because their reps have seniority.
Matthew’s refusal to address these considerations suggests that the “Fix is In” in the Obama and Democratic camp, however.
Note that I do think our transport infrastructure is in bad shape — Bush stole from the Highway Fund throughout his administration. I do think major upgrades in some areas are needed badly–especially if we’re going to continue to admit 1 million new immigrants year after year.
I just don’t think such repairs are the best approach to providing stimulus and a growth engine to our economy.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Clarification: I don’t think transport infrastructure repair are the best approach to providing IMMEDIATE, NEAR TERM stimulus and a growth engine to our economy. I do think they are a great idea over the next 4 years — provided they are rationally planned and executed in a reasonably competent way. No more Big Digs.
It is obviously better to spend money on reducing our traffic jams than to piss it away on military operations in the Caspian Sea trying to steal oil deposits from Russia.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Because it’s continuing the Bush policy of wasting money we don’t have.
It’s not being wasted (have you ready anything about this subject at all? The US has major, multi-decade, unmet needs in infrastructure) and we do have the money — loads of it, in fact – being lent to the government at zero interest.
As I noted, transferring INFORMATION instead of fat-ass people is FAR more efficient and gives far greater bang for the buck.
It doesn’t violate the laws of physics to spend money on both subways and web infrastructure you know.
The places that badly need infrastructure upgrades are the very places where the local economies are booming…
Except such places no longer exist in the United States.
Because those locations are LOSING population and will lose more as people move away.
Outside of the prairie counties, not much of the US is losing population. Even Michigan and Ohio are likely to continue to grow (albeit slowly) over the long term (as they did in the 90s). And even states with a lot of prairie (North Dakota, say) have smaller cities that could surely benefit from new, green buses, or better airports, or a better power grid.
Matthew’s refusal to address these considerations suggests that the “Fix is In” in the Obama and Democratic camp, however.
No, it just means he’s not as stupid as I am. Anyway, there’s a major infrastructure package coming soon, and there’s not a thing you can do about it, so shut the fuck up already.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
I think you guys are confusing two different things: growth in general population (all age cohorts) vice growth in employed WORKERS –i.e.,people contributing to GDP.
Yeah, if a teenager or elderly person spends money, it counts. But that money had to come from a person working for wages — either directly (as in a parent to child or child to elderly parent support) or indirectly (via government income distributions from taxes.)
If economic growth in a local area is falling then incomes are falling , spending is falling and infrastructure improvements will only be transfer payments to some construction workers — similar to Social Security checks. They won’t be INVESTMENTS that will generate returns in the future. Building a transport system that’s needed adds value — overbuilding beyond needed capacity is waste.
The US economy’s problem is not falling demand — it is enormous waste that is making us increasing uncompetitive with India, China, and Europe. This Keynesian bullshit is the equivalent of feeding candy to an out-of-shape boxer.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Trackback: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/12/16/134015/83
Added spending on more energy efficient buses themselves and an Energy Independence Transport Project Development Bank.
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