Bruce McF receives another Karita Hummer's Silver Pen Award for yet another outstanding piece that connects the dots on green jobs and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure (e.g. New Orleans!). Bruce McF is erudite and thorough, through and through, and has put much research and thought in to this marvelous piece, as he always does in his writing. He inform us all, so we can push for how to rebuild America, by doing it in a way that is for the common good. What could be more important than publicly investing in something that helps our economy, builds jobs, attacks global warming, rehabilitates crumbling cities, and gives us all a better quality of life, enabling access for us all to places of national beauty and pride. Well done article. KHTransport Stimulus: Doing It Rightby: BruceMcFreposted from Progressive Blue: http://www.eenrblog.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3441Mon Jan 26, 2009 at 11:27:34 AM EST |
| (the Midnight Oil for you... - promoted by poligirl) Adapted from an entry at Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
That is why we set forth this $85-billion initiative from our committee. It's been reduced in the final going. We expect that it'll come out somewhere around $63 billion, but $30 billion for highways. As I described in Transport Stimulus: You're Doing It Wrong, actual effective stimulus spending was shortchanged -- and in particular spending with substantial long term economic and strategic benefits -- to "pay for" tax cuts. In reality, if we want to be able to "afford" tax cuts, what we need first and foremost is growth, and economic growth requires effective government investment in the infrastructure of a New Energy Economy. |
| Energy Independent Transport has a strategic defense imperative, and a long term economic development imperative, on top of the substantial transport benefits and, in the Stimulus Bill as it stands, a substantial and primarily untapped potential for short-term stimulus. And "not enough shovel ready projects" was reportedly the word from the last days of the Bush Transportation Department.
But the bulk of the previous post was digging into the details, and finding out that we know for sure that there are untapped, shovel ready projects out there. The question here is, how could this be done right? Here's an idea. Suppose we set up accounts for the responsible local authority for transit to be spent on any qualifying project from a list of Energy Independent Transport projects. Fund it at the level of $100 per person -- roughly $30b total. And funds that have not been spent in a year get re-allocated to authorities that funded qualifying projects. Some of those local transit authorities will be "Transit Authorities" (which do exists in quite a lot of places). Where there is no local transit authority, that will be the incorporated municipality or county. In Native American treaty reservations, it seems like it will be a First Nation council of some form. If Congress sets its mind to it, it can work out a way to specify the local transit authority. And no bailing out and saying some localities cannot be trusted, and the money goes to the State Department of Transportation on their behalf ... we have just seen that the majority of State Departments of Transportation either do not understand the importance of putting forward shovel-ready Energy Independence Transport projects ... or do not really understand the needs out where the wheel hits the rail. And if Congress sets its mind to it, it can work out a list of Energy Independence Transport projects. One thing that makes it easier is that it doesn't have to prioritize them, or decide relative levels of funding. The local authorities will do that. Just list projects that won't be a waste of the stimulus dollars on the obsolete transport systems of the 20th century, and we will be fine.
... add to the list yourself. But whatever is on the list ... make the funds "use it in a year or lose it" ... and you will see the bulk of the funds spent in the first year. And if you don't ... well, obviously the second year the funds will get to the transit authorities who have a demonstrated ability to find shovel-ready projects. I expect that we would quickly learn how many "shovel ready" Energy Independence Transport projects there really are out there. Read About It (1983) |
Transport Stimulus: You're Doing It Wrong (+)by: BruceMcF, Repeat Recipient of Karita Hummer's Silver Pen AwardKudos to BruceMcF for this article of such great import at this juncture in our land, when we need jobs, fair commerce, and environmental value in all things economic! Bruce, as always is thorough with his guidance and advice on infrastructure. Thank you, Bruce! |
| (on transportation and the economy... - promoted by poligirl) Burning the Midnight Oil for Energy Independence (crosspost links at the blog) There is this big emphasis on "shovel ready projects" in the Stimulus Bill ... but now that the details are coming out, we can see that in transport, its just a load of horseshit used as an excuse for supporting business as usual.
The headline numbers are $30b highway spending, $10b for public transport and rail:
I got a "shovel-ready" project for you ... shoveling out the bullshit from the Bush Administration Department of Transport and replacing the pandering to the oil companies with a concern for America's Economic Future. |
| BruceMcF :: Transport Stimulus: You're Doing It Wrong |
| The Details, Wherein The Devil Lies Take the following details, wherein the devil always lies. Under the summary description, "$10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption" ... which is fishy right there, since everybody knows there are more than $10b in deferred maintenance to get passenger and freight rail in this country, and more than $10b in freight bottlenecks, many of which have been "studied" to death (since Yet Another Study is much cheaper than funding capital works) ... and we see the following specifics (emphases added): Capital Assistance to States-Intercity Passenger Rail Service Recovery Funding: $300 million No detail on the number of "shovel ready" projects, but AASHTO annual investment needs estimated at roughly $3b annually, allocation of 10% of that. Amtrak Capital Grants Recovery Funding: $800 million A backlog in excess of $10b, funding of under 8% of that. Transit Capital Assistance Recovery Funding: $6.000 billion $15.9b ready to go projects, funding at 38% of that. Fixed Guideway Infrastructure Investment Recovery Funding: $2.000 billion Capital backlog of $50b, funding at 4% of that. Capital Investment Grants Recovery Funding: $1.000 billion $2.4b in pre-approved projects (but, it would seem, not yet funded), funding at 42% of that ... and that's just what the Bush Dept. of Transport has identified. "More Asphalt" Sure Is The Change Someone Can Believe In Now, for comparison, what is the ratio of funding to "shovel ready" projects for highways? Highway Infrastructure Investment Recovery Funding: $30 billion In other words, roughly 42% of the annual funding gap and roughly 50% of identified shovel ready projects. (Appropriations Committee Report on Recovery Bill (pdf), pp. 69-71) The Appropriations Committee can natter on all it wants about the glories of roadworks, but this country passed our peak oil production about forty years ago and is now addicted to petroleum imports for more than half of our petroleum needs, while a much larger part of the operating costs of the rail and bus transport system are the wages of the people working on the system. Those non-highway appropriations have a strategic defense imperative, and a long term economic development imperative, in addition to transport benefits that outweigh the benefits of yet another roadwork project, and yet are underfunded compared to highway construction.
Even worse, there is $0.0b on improvements in regional freight rail transport. And the 100% federal funding allowed under the stimulus plan would allow us to make short term investments with long-term benefits all across the country ... this is not just a matter of the Northeast Corridor and California. For example, there is a massive freight logjam in Chicago. As the Metropolitan Planning Council notes: A new state capital plan would mean new investments in metropolitan Chicago 's freight rail system. Trains currently crawl through the region at average speeds of 12 mph and frequently block traffic at hundreds of intersections in the south and southwest suburbs alone. Modernizing our freight rail network not only would reduce delays for train commuters, drivers and transporters but also would accommodate commuter rail and spur economic opportunities in adjacent communities. The entire region would benefit from much-needed freight capital expenditures. Investing in freight rail throughways in Chicago is an investment in the productivity of our national economy. And there are "shovel ready" projects. And Stimulus Funding? $0.0b, because we rely on State Departments of Transport with their heavy highway bias to come up with projects, so urgent national transport priorities are set on the back burner to pander to entrenched constituencies to entrenched state bureaucracies. What in the Hell Happened to Changed We Can Believe In? I want to stress that this is not a general whinge about the stimulus. The Energy Infrastructure part of the stimulus is excellent and the sustainable energy production part of the stimulus is OK ... far too much to the chimeras of clean coal and liquid biofuels, but on the balance, from what little I can tell, OK. But for the Transport part of the stimulus ... WTF? Well, its no surprise ... this is one last "surprise in the punchbowl" from the Bush Department of Transportation. From the California HSR blog: Rep. Jim Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation Committee and passionate rail advocate, has been rather outspoken in his anger about the underfunding of transit in the proposal. He explains what may have happened to make the stimulus plan so weak:Basically CBO got numbers from the Bush administration DOT that said it was not possible to spend money on these projects within 90 days, meaning they're not "shovel ready". Oberstar explains that's BS and it's ridiculous to be taking numbers from the Bush folks at DOT that are getting ready to high-tail it out of town. He's really mad about this and I know he's going to fight to get more spending on infrastructure. Take this fight to your Congressperson ... phone, mail ... you known the drill. We can't afford let the Bush Department of Transport get away with one last act of sabotage against our nation's Energy Independence and, of course, the global climate as a whole. |
OK, so, to make an egregiously long story merely excessively long, a very strange thing happened on the road to the Stimulus Package. As 
Now, it is quite true that some "sexy" rail transport projects really aren't shovel ready. It will take six years to electrify our main freight rail lines and provide 110mph Rapid Passenger Rail to most of the country. Bullet trains in California and the Northeast Corridor (NEC) will take fifteen to twenty years. These require medium to long term plans and funding. 
Some ideas to get the list started:
We are spending $2.4b on the chimera of "clean coal", just to buy protective cover for the real sustainable energy spending ... and there is just $1.1b on regional rail transport. 
