In February 2011 Matt Kahn and I released a report for Brookings Fix It First, Expand It Second, Reward It Third: A New Strategy for America’s Highways. In the 2013 State of the Union Address, the USDOT Co-opted some of our ideas and language when the President announced a Fix-It-First plan. Reihan Salam asked me […]
I get quoted in Global Construction Review: $40bn “fix it first” plan headlines Obama’s infrastructure push In his State of the Union address last month, US President Barack Obama proposed investing $50bn, starting right away, on the country’s transportation infrastructure. Of that, $40bn would go toward the upgrades most urgently needed on highways, bridges, transit […]
I was interviewed on radio by Access Minnesota talking about Fix It First – Changing the Way We Maintain & Pay For Highways (based in part on the paper Matt Kahn and I wrote). For the week of April 3rd, 2011 Guest: David Levinson, associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University […]
Some links to articles about our recent Brookings report: Smart Growth America New report from Brookings Institution advocates for road repair and maintenance High Speed Train Talk What to do instead of building HSR
In our recent report, we used the term “Fix It First”. As Picasso reportedly says, “Great Artists Steal”, the term has been in circulation for a few years. I do not know the first reference, (here it is at least 2002) but it has taken off since Aug 1, 2007: Transportation 4 America: Americans want […]
Fix It First, Expand It Second, Reward It Third: A New Strategy for America’s Highways – Brookings Institution by Matthew E. Kahn, Professor of Economics, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and David M. Levinson, RP Braun/CTS Chair in Transportation, University of Minnesota Abstract: The roads and bridges that make up our nation’s highway […]
We let our politicians get away with ribbon cuttings while core infrastructure fails.
Matthew Kahn wrote: “http://www.slideee.com/slide/economic-analysis-of-transportation-investments-the-grow-america-act, The White House cites my work with David Levinson (see page 4). ” More recent research has highlighted the importance of selecting investments wisely in key areas of the country on the basis of their economic contributions. This research has also emphasized the importance of maintaining existing assets in a good state of […]
In the text of the 2013 State of the Union (via MinnPost), transportation gets an important shout-out, with special attention to Fix-It-First: “America’s energy sector is just one part of an aging infrastructure badly in need of repair. Ask any CEO where they’d rather locate and hire: a country with deteriorating roads and bridges, or […]
Infrastructurist picks up on Fix-it-First [the article also notes that traffic was up 20.5 billion miles (total VMT) from the previous year (about 0.67%), it should be noted that this is less than the population growth in the US (about 1%)]. So does Crossroads Blog Smart Growth Round-Up: Livable Cities and Transportation. It is the […]
David Levinson, Transportist 