(Source: Reuters) 

WASHINGTON- The U.S. government would overhaul how it plans and manages big-ticket highway and transit projects in an ambitious proposal being drafted by a senior Democratic lawmaker who oversees transportation.

 House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar told the Reuters Infrastructure Summit on Tuesday that his plan would reorganize the U.S. Transportation Department in order to streamline infrastructure spending programs.

“It’s a complete restructuring of the thought process, the delivery system, the delivery mechanism, and the funding for it,” Oberstar, from Minnesota, said in his Capitol Hill office.

Oberstar’s proposal would be the centerpiece of a six-year highway and transit construction bill Congress will consider this year.

He estimates funding at $450 billion, but the figure has not been finalized. Oberstar, who will manage the highway bill in the House, hopes to propose his plan in the coming weeks.

The Senate is working on its own version.

The Oberstar measure would retain current federal funding sources as well as give more spending discretion to states. In addition, it would make room for private investment in infrastructure programs.

Lawmakers face a September 30 deadline to pass a long-term spending blueprint for new U.S. highway construction, road and bridge repair, and public transit.

That legislation, known as the highway bill, would be separate from the economic stimulus bill passed in February that provides $48.1 billion for transportation.

The current highway/transit construction law was approved in July 2005 with a price tag of $286.4 billion. That amount was considered by many in Congress and industry as inadequate to upgrade the country’s aging transportation infrastructure.

Industry leaders are pressing for the next bill to exceed $500 billion.

Highway spending is funded through a federal trust which draws from taxes on motor fuels. But recent shortages in gas tax receipts due to higher pump prices that have reduced driving and more fuel-efficient vehicles have prompted calls to find alternatives.

Oberstar’s plan would keep the Highway Trust fund, but would allow states to determine their spending priorities.

“They’ve had these responsibilities. They’ve just been straight-jacketed,” Oberstar said about the states. “We’re going to give the states broad discretion.”

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: The Infrastructurist)

(Source:  Infrastructurist)

Image: Nostri-imago@ flickr

So, the absent minded editor of a certain infrastructure news site recently had an adventure in losing things on Amtrak trains. The experience was revealing and – spoiler alert – the much-slagged government owned and operated rail line acquitted themselves beautifully on matters of beyond-the-call-of-duty customer service.

 For simplicity’s sake, let’s just call this editor “I.” Anyway, I was headed from Washington DC to New York on the 11 a.m. Acela. When the train reached Penn Station (on time), I gathered the various bags and coats I’d brought and exited the train. Not among the gathered possession was an iPhone, which was left unattended on the seat. I realized this as I was about to catch the subway home to Brooklyn, by which time the Acela had already scooted off for Boston.At this point the situation looked glum. It remained so through the course of the first conversation I had with an Amtrak employee. The gentleman, white haired and in his 50s, gave the classic bureaucrat’s shrug. “You gotta call lost and found in Boston,” he said. Shrug.

“Are they open today? Will they be open when the train arrives?” I asked. It was Sunday.

“They’re closed today,” he said. Shrug.

I gave him a pleading look. He shrugged again and turned away.

So even if some heroic individual wanted to return the device, it would take a return visit to the train station in Boston to actually be able to turn it in – assuming, say, she didn’t get off the train in Stamford or Providence or…

I went to the Customer Service office. There, a genial woman named Karen became my new best friend. She immediately began coordinating a multi-city search and rescue operation. Before I even finished explaining the situation, she was on the phone with an agent in New Haven to make arrangements for someone to dash onto the train and look for the device during the brief stopover there. She called the lost phone about a dozen times in hopes that someone would answer. At some point, a man did answer. His name was Mark and he was a conductor on the train. He promised that he would get the phone back to New York safely that evening. Karen’s liaison in New Haven organized a complicated hot handoff across the platform between Mark and a conductor southbound train. About four hours after I’d got off the train without, an Amtrak conductor walked up to me in Penn Station with a sealed envelope containing the lost phone. It was carefully bubble-wrapped. 

(Source: Infrastructurist)

Image: Infrastructurist

Everywhere you look, from Argentina to Saudi Arabia, there’s a country planning a new high-speed rail line.  Contributor Yonah Freemark offered this incredible, easy to understand graphical depiction on Infrastructurist, which compares seven lines on four continents that are either in the engineering phase or already under construction. They range in size from the diminutive 34-mile project that will connect Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to the gargantuan 818-mile link between Beijing and Shanghai. The variations in construction cost per mile and local meaning of the term “high speed” are almost as great.

(Source: Infrastructurist & Huffingtonpost)

At a White House gathering last week, both Barack Obama and Joe Biden warned America’s governors not to squander stimulus funds on ill-conceived infrastructure projects. “Six months from now,” Biden said, “if the verdict on this effort is that we’ve wasted the money, we built things that were unnecessary, or we’ve done things that are legal but make no sense, then, folks, don’t look for any help from the federal government for a long while.”

Nowhere is this warning more pertinent than in building new roads. The stimulus bill allocates nearly $30 billion in highway funds to the states and requires that put the money to use quickly. That’s a good thing when the money is being spent on smart construction, but it raises the danger that some bad projects will be rushed through, simply because the plans are ready to go (in some cases after being controversially fast-tracked by the Bush administration.) Misguided road building can encourage sprawl, make communities less livable, and devastate the local environment. We looked at shovel-ready new highway projects across the country that are either getting stimulus money or could potentially get some and found seven that, in Biden’s words, “make no sense.”

HuffingtonPost article by the author summarizes these projects as follows:

7. I-295 Loop in Fayetteville, NC – An 8-mile stretch of this freeway is slated to get $63 million for a construction start within the next few months. But it runs through rural land and is a recipe for the worst kind of sprawl. Meanwhile it would deprive the city center of economically valuable military traffic from Fort Bragg. So why are they doing it? Two of the key officials making the state funding list are from Fayetteville.

6. I-69 extension in Indiana – This 142 mile-long highway would cost an estimated $3.5 billion to build. Its effect on the sections south of Bloomington, where it will be built on “new terrain,” would be devastating to rural life in the area, with 400 families affected by the route’s construction and 2,800 acres of farmland paved over. More than 1,000 acres of forests would be cut down. There’s a better alternative that would cost just half as much.

5. Widening I-93 in southern New Hampshire – The plan to expand this overcrowded road from four lanes today to eight along a 20-mile stretch between Salem and Manchester would cost of $750 million. But it ignores what is common knowledge among transportation experts: building more lanes simply creates more traffic. A better alternative: a parallel existing rail line, neglected for years, would offer the area’s commuters a direct shot to downtown Boston.

4. I-66 in Kentucky – This $10 billion project is a disaster. The 420-mile route lies directly between I-64 and I-40, which are only three hours apart. In this rural area, a freeway simply isn’t necessary as there is little traffic on existing roads. And since neighboring states have abandoned work on connecting segments, meaning that the highway would effectively dead-end into local roads at both ends. But the the most dire effects would be on the environment: The road would tear through the Appalachians and the Daniel Boone National Forest.

3. Grand Parkway in Houston, Texas – At 184 miles in length and a projected cost of $5.1 billion, Houston’s fourth outer loop a world-class boondoggle. A 14-mile stretch of the corridor, funded by $181 million of stimulus money, would destroy some local prairie and parkland. The nonprofit group that is pushing the road, is made up major land developers, who see a profitable new frontier for exurban sprawl.

2. Intercounty Connector in the DC suburbs of Maryland – Former governor Parris Glendening thought this highway project would be an environmental disaster. But the 18 mile, $3 billion road seems to be going ahead, to the detriment of Maryland’s ability to fund other transportation projects, like a much-needed new light rail lines in Baltimore. Worst of all, the highway won’t even be much of a help in clearing the traffic on Washington’s infamously congested Beltway–its net effect would be to increase the number of miles traveled by Marylanders in their cars.

1. I-65 Downtown Bridge in Louisville, Kentucky – This $4.1 billion project would create a 24-lane monstrosity along downtown Louisville’s waterfront, eparating the city center from the Ohio river and cutting into a brand new park. Approximately 100 residential properties and 30 businesses would be taken for the project, and the enormous, ugly interchange of the three roads would loom above downtown. A much simpler and cheaper plan would open up the downtown waterfront and allow the for the construction of an attractive boulevard like San Francisco’s Embarcadero. 

Click here to read the detailed analysis on each of these projects.