Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Thomas Infrastructure

via [ Discovering Urbanism ]

Thomas Infrastructure

Sometimes it takes a disaster like the Earth Day Disaster to realize our hometowns and our future have been colonized.

Thomas East Chicago Portrait Series, Economics, Energy, Environment, Infrastructure, Politics

via [ Next Nature ]

Thomas Infrastructure

via [ Pruned ]

Prune has a remarkable three part series focusing on the spaces underneath transportation infrastructure. Very much worth the look.

Under Spaces 1

Under Spaces 2

Under Spaces 3

Thomas Case Studies, Infrastructure

Spatial Costs

via [The Daily Dish ] by Richard Florida

Image via SUNY Stonybrook Department of Geosciences (h/t: Ian Swain, Martin Prosperity Institute). This poster, courtesy of the city of Muenster, Germany, illustrates the different amounts of space taken up by different kinds of transit.

• Bicycle - 90 sq. m for 71 people to park their bikes.
• Car - 1000 sq. m for 72 people to park their cars (avg. occupancy of 1.2 people per car).
• Bus - 30 sq m for the bus.

The Daily Dish

Thomas Case Studies, Infrastructure, Urbanism

I would like to direct readers to series of lengthy posts by Aaron M. Renn at Urbanphile. I am curious how well his thoughts hold up from a marginalized point-of-view. 

Chicago: A Declaration of Independence

Chicago: Reconnecting the Hinterland
Part 1A - Metropolitan Connections
Part 1B - High Speed Rail
Part 2A - Onshore Outsourcing
Part 2B - On Innovation

Thomas Chicago, Infrastructure, Northwest Indiana

Despite differences in perspective and policy, there is a relatively strong consensus for High Speed Rail in the Midwest. Again, I am an advocate for high speed rail and an advocate for marginalized communities like Gary and East Chicago, which are often asked to carry the burden of negative externalities. 

1) Midwest High Speed Rail Corridors

There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about the idea of creating a Midwest high speed rail network. The federal government has already designated a system of Midwest rail corridors. There’s a lobbying organization pushing it called the Midwest High Speed Rail Association. A host of environmental groups support it. I even had a (successful) mini-effort to get Louisville included in the Midwest network.

Read More from Urbanophile

2) High-Speed Frenzy [ Wall Street Journal ]

Spain’s ambitious plans by Thomas Catan

…the country is on track to bypass France and Japan to have the world’s biggest network of ultrafast trains by the end of next year

- Read more

Thomas Infrastructure, Urbanism

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Thomas Infrastructure

Via [ Infranet Lab ]

Infrastructure for everyone! – not so fast.

[Money for Public Projects] The New York Times

With the global economy in recession and unemployment levels rising, elected leaders throughout the world are turning to infrastructure projects as a way to put thousands of people back to work.

With this massive forthcoming investment we just had to investigate what’s likely to come down the infrastructure pipeline.  It turns out however, that what me be coming our way are not exactly the forward-looking interventions we are hoping for.  In fact, the stimulus packages proposed potentially threaten the exact projects we should want to succeed.

This risk is a direct result of our current economic situation.  In order for the stimulus to stimulate things need to happen relatively quickly.  Thus, a tension exists between doing things well and doing things quickly.

Unfortunately, federal governments don’t have the best reputation when it comes to spending wisely on infrastructure. In a recent New York Times article “Piling up Monuments of Waste”, David Leonhardt claims:

It’s hard to exaggerate how scattershot the current system is. Government agencies usually don’t even have to do a rigorous analysis of a project or how it would affect traffic and the environment, relative to its cost and to the alternatives — before deciding whether to proceed. 

<Reality Check>
In one recent survey of local officials, almost 80 percent said they had based their decisions largely on politics, while fewer than 20 percent cited a project’s potential benefits.
</Reality Check> 

Road and highway construction is one apparent category of infrastructure spending where politics threatens to trump utility. The Brookings Institution directs our attention at U.S. roads as being and potential investment with a high ROI. The proposed investment needs to distance itself from politically driven projects that lead to things like underused highways in western Pennsylvania, and instead focus on alleviating the financial losses in major US centers due to road congestion.

[Clogged Arteries]

…the places that are most critical to the country’s economic competitiveness don’t get what they need. The nation’s 100 largest metropolitan regions generate 75 percent of its economic output. They also handle 75 percent of its foreign sea cargo, 79 percent of its air cargo, and 92 percent of its air-passenger traffic. Yet of the 6,373 earmarked projects that dominate the current federal transportation law, only half are targeted at these metro areas.

“Clogged Arteries”, Bruce Katz and Robert Puentas, The Atlantic

Ok.  So this is one tangible project.  We’ll keep looking for more.  Hopefully the next one we find will not only offer hard-data by analyzing effect vs. cost (also known as value) but also move beyond the shovel-ready standards rooted in the 1950s fossil fuel paradigm – something that we may lose sight of during this infrastructure spending spree

Thomas Case Studies, Infrastructure