Road, transportation builder: America stays in the slow lane
‘“The presidential campaigns are not focused on this, but we need to change the conversation. The other countries are not waiting for us. They’re surpassing us,â€? Ruane said, noting China plans to build 53,000 miles of new highway in the first two decades of this century compared to just 1,130 new interstate miles here.’
Comparing China to the US in terms of road construction is clearly a strawman argument, the US already built a huge network, ours is mature, the B/C ratio for new links in the US is much lower than China. China has yet to build out its network.
The strategy for maturity is not more of the same.
Day: 2008-06-07
Getting the Transportation Infrastructure We Need
Nice post on Planetizen by Robert Goodspeed on some of the upcoming policy proposals on US infrastructure finance Getting the Transportation Infrastructure We Need
The last line is a vote for federalism: “Maybe the feds should just worry about big stuff like airports and intercity passenger rail, and leave the rest up to states and cities to worry about.”
Asphalt costs too much
According to USA Today, the rising price of oil has led to a hike in asphalt costs, which means less repair can be done for a fixed budget: Oil prices seep into asphalt costs, detour road work: Repair projects are a blow to budgets
This should make the concrete people happy, as asphalt loses marketshare.
People live within their space-time prism
From a Nature article, summarized in AP: Study secretly tracks cell phone users outside US
The gist was that about 3/4 people stay mostly within a 20 mile circle. This is largely the idea of the space-time prism developed by geographer Torsten Hagerstrand.
David Levinson, Transportist 