The Infrastructure Report

Future of Highways

2008-02-14T13:45:00.000-08:00

The Atlantic is a somewhat highbrow monthly that is decidedly establishment in its point of view. I mention that only because the latest edition (March 2008) contains a couple of startling pieces touching on transportation issues of the future. Both suggest the limits of urban sprawl may be upon us.

The mass movement into suburbs over the past half century was made possible by the rapid construction of freeway systems heavily subsidized by the Federal government. This was an unforeseen consequence of the Interstate Highway program which was conceived as a means of quickly moving commerce about the country. The system is perhaps the fondest achievement of the Eisenhower administration. Ike was so impressed by the German autobahns during the World War II campaign there that he brought the idea home. As a booster to commerce and the economy the Interstate Highway program was a smashing success and the enabling of suburban growth was long seen as a side benefit. Today, however, fierce opposition to expanding commute highways have converted them into bottlenecks not only to commuters but to the flow of commerce originally envisioned. One of the Atlantic articles cites an academic study which quantifies the economic loss wrought by highways, mainly in urban areas, which are operating at volumes above capacity. This is reported to be nearly $50 billion annually.

Another article reports on how the rising costs, both in money and time, of commuting by automobile as well as the sterile environment of many suburban places have driven a rebirth of urban living. It goes on to predict that some of the suburban developments of recent years featuring large homes on large lots are already beginning to resemble urban slums with an excess of vacant buildings and an increase in crime. It foresees a future where suburbia will be the home of crime and poverty, a 180-degree change from recent history. For myself, the peaceful middle class suburb where I grew up has already made this conversion with plenty of vacant buildings and a general sense of menace in public spaces.

In today's global economy the United States is competing with Europe, the Pacific Rim, China, and, increasingly India. All of these places are well ahead of us in building diverse transportation systems designed to move both commerce and people efficiently. In general, this means a separation of the two. Travel to London, Shanghai, Tokyo. or even Mexico City and your trip from the airport to the commercial district will be rapid and relatively stress free. Compare that to arrival at Kennedy or LAX. The difference is that in America you are competing for travel room in heavy traffic.

The time is coming where we will have to change our relationship with the automobile. We're not going to be able to afford them sooner than we all think. But, of course, we are not making any rational or even different plans. Let's hope we don't wait too long.

We should get behind ideas like hefty penalties for driving into certain congested areas, development of high speed electric train systems both local and regional, and separations of commercial and individual traffic. But we have done little of this. In California proposals have been made to address each of these areas and have died in a storm of protest from the keepers of the status quo. We are very much like addicts who realize that we should cease our behavior but haven't the fortitude to do so.

Not Infrastructure

2008-02-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

Try as I might I find myself unable to ignore the Presidential election campaigns now running at full speed. After seven plus years of the worst President in my lifetime (stretching back to Roosevelt), there is a feeling that this particular election is very important.

As a consequence of the younger Bush's administration and the knee jerk Republican Party, the prestige of the United States is at a low ebb, our economy is in serious jeopardy, our multiplying enemies are emboldened, and our people are fixated on the personal foibles of witless celebrities. This last is important because many many of our people don't care about the rest of the world, think they'll win the lottery soon, and believe we can and should smash our enemies, widely viewed as the females and non-whites of the world, any time. Meanwhile they're off to Wal-Mart or checking out the latest with Brittany.

Right now the presumptive Republican candidate is Senator John McCain of Arizona who is running on the notion that he was one of the few Republicans who occasionally opposed Bush and that he was a Prisoner of War for some five or six years during the Viet Nam war, which we are encouraged to think noble of him. In fact he is a conventional Republican, very closely attuned to the corporate agenda including lower taxes, particularly for the well-off and the corporations, strong doses of imperialism, free trade when it suits his corporate friends' needs, and reduction of government services so government policing can be increased. He will pay lip service to the so-called conservative social agenda which means opposition to any significant change in the patriarchal status quo. One senses that he's pretty indifferent to the latter, however.

McCain can be counted on to appoint judges who are not interested in protecting individual rights, to cut taxes for the well-off, and, by the way, to continue and expand our imperial incursions into the Middle East and perhaps elsewhere. I believe he will run on pretty much the Bush agenda but promise competent management of it. He will likely jettison some of its more ludicrous aspects such as the environmental degradation and stifling of scientific inquiry the Bushies are so fatuously proud of. But he will run against Bush, not his program.

The Democrats on the other hand have reached an interesting point in their history and, I would suggest, will likely die as a national party if they don't win this one. First off, their nominee will almost certainly be either a woman or a black man, two categories of individuals thought impossible to elect a short generation ago. Both will start off with a sizable number of people who will vote against them strictly on the basis of their gender or racial identity. That's a good reason to think they'll lose in November right there.

But the two are engaged in an extremely close chase to the nomination, closest since Kennedy/Johnson in 1960, that feature what we might call the old party and, just maybe, the new. The old is represented by Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, the woman. Her claim to fame is being the wife of Bill Clinton, the President immediately prior to Bush the younger. She has also been in the Senate since 2000 where she has pretty much established herself as a separate entity from her husband. Even so, if elected she will probably be a lot like Bill, triangulating on key issues, moving cautiously into new initiatives. She will appoint safe judges and play the imperialism cautiously. Corporations do not fear her.

The new is represented by Seator Barack Obama of Illinois. His father was a black African, his mother a white from Kansas. He has established himself as a charismatic speaker during a meteoric career which includes a lot of high achievement both inside and outside of politics. How he would govern is not clearly predictable due to limited experience in Washington. His campaign has been long on ideals and short on particulars. He has promised an end to divisiveness and the old class warfare rhetoric. His followers (full disclosure - he's my choice) are very enthusiastic over his intelligence and charisma. He has built a staff that has proven quite capable.

Who ends up with the Democratic nomination is truly anyone's guess at this point. It is entirely possible that the decision will not be made until the convention, so a compromise or brokered candidate is also possible, although unlikely. It's odd because you'd think the Republicans would be in total disarray given the Bush disaster, but they're looking good right now. So the question becomes, will we miss the national Democratic party? And can we survive four more years of a Republican President?

Something Happening Here?

2008-01-22T10:41:00.000-08:00

The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is thinking about running for President this year as an independent. Like every candidate does these days, he's going through the "exploratory" phase of his campaign meaning that he's trying to figure out if he has any chance to win. I don't think he'll run unless he feels like he's got a reasonable chance to win. This differentiates him from the last two, rather notorious,independent candidates, Poss Perot and Ralph Nader. Both of those guys had huge egos that needed massaging and both of them, inter alia, assured victory for the candidate who would have likely not won if they had stayed home, Clinton in 1992 and W Bush in 2000. Neither Perot or Nader had any chance of actually winning their election and, unless one or both of them are unusually delusional, a possibility too grim to contemplate, they knew it.

Bloomberg is different though. First off he's got more money by far than all the Republican and Democratic candidates combined and second of all he actually has some experience as an elected government official, to wit Mayor of New York. Of note is the fact that his regime has won plaudits from a broad spectrum of political commentators. His approach is to identify problems and apply practical solutions to them with little regard to whose political ox gets gored. From him you hear very little rhetoric about supposed social ills. He carries almost no political baggage. He seems to have a knack for understanding the problems of a lot of people, not just those of his class, or those belonging to groups that have supported his election. In other words we may be looking at a genuine breath of fresh air here.

He recently gave a de facto campaign speech wherein he criticized the Federal government's neglect of infrastructure over the past several decades, pointing out very effectively how our decaying infrastructure is already taking a toll on the economy that can only get worse if the neglect continues. He's right of course. We don't seem to fully appreciate the value of good infrastructure and instead squander our money on some pretty silly pork barrel project which are designed more to reward political contributors than serve us well.

In the 1950s we started the Interstate Highway Program and in the 1970s the Clean Water Program. Both were remarkably successful. But the infrastructure we built with these programs will not last forever and needs attention right now. Right now our airports are badly overcrowded, our rail system a relic in near ruins, and our ports falling behind. The need has become urgent. Go Bloomberg!

California Water

2007-10-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

Looks like Arnold, the Chamber of Commerce yahoos, and the building trades unions are teaming up to push the peripheral canal and a spate of new dams. This is in wake of the first low rainfall winter in the past ten years. For the purposes of their campaign this is referred to as a drought.

It isn't any such thing of course, it's simply a below average rainy season, but there are clearly some powerful interests that would like to leverage it into more cheap water for agriculture, another quarter century of suburban sprawl, and a bunch of high paying union jobs.

A short history lesson here, the peripheral canal was to be built around the Bay in order to convey high quality water from the California Water Project to the southern part of the state. As it sits now, that water goes into the Bay to replace water of lower quality pumped out for shipment south. The canal is actually a good idea in terms of providing higher quality water for the masses who take it into their bodies. It was on the ballot in the 70s and was expected to routinely pass as a fairly non-controversial item. But, in fact, the nascent environmental movement was able to convince people like me that it was actually a water grab. Nothing surer to arouse a Northern Californian than the idea that the south will steal our water again. Bottom line was 5% approval in the Bay Area and the project was rejected. It must be said that the environmentalists' campaign was very misleading.

But now it's back and Arnold is burning political capital pushing it. It's the other part of the campaign, the push for more dams and an expansion of water storage that's the real interest here. The C of C types and the unions are predictably in favor for reasons not entirely altruistic but the ones who stand to benefit the most are the corporate agricultural interests who are the ones getting squeezed by the increasing demand for an essentially fixed supply of water. It's fascinating to watch this industry at work politically. They are almost exclusively Republican and mouth all the rhetoric of free market wonders. Now that the free market is running them out of business, however, they are crying for massive government intervention.

Such frauds the Republicans can be.

This is somewhat of a watershed event, if they don't sell this slightly tainted bill of goods to the voters, you will probably see the end of the California agriculture industry within 50 years. And this is why I oppose this measure, corporate agriculture should die here, it's wasteful and outmoded. The Southwestern states and Mexico are already taking the lead as it should be. Corporate agriculture can longer afford the land and, absent the short term reprieve, the water to continue.

The Big Figleaf

2007-09-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

One of the better underreported infrastructure stories in recent years is the construction of the freeway tunnel in Boston, Massachusetts, commonly referred to as "The Big Dig". There has been much news about the death of a woman last year due to a sudden and catastrophic failure of a bolt holding up a concrete ceiling slab, but little of the culture that led to this event.

This is a potentially huge story that could bring about fundamental changes in the way large Engineering projects get built. This project of massive scope has been so poorly managed that the Program Managers, a consortium of Bechtel and Parsons-Brinkerhoff appear to be willing to spend "somewhere north of $300 million to settle all disputes and avoid litigation.

Let's deconstruct that for a moment. The total project cost was to date is just short of $12 billion. Aside: this is a couple of orders of magnitude above its original estimate. On budget not. A program manager should cost no more than 5% of project cost. However the oligarchs have done an excellent job of getting more than that in recent years so, just for laughs let's say they were paid 10%, I have no idea what the real number is. Ten percent of a lot of money is a lot of money, in this case about $1.2 billion. Getting a 10% profit on program manager contracts is tantamount to highway robbery, given how low the risk is, but it's also the high end of the norm. So Bechtel and P-B may have seen a profit of over $100 million. That's probably best case speculation. So they are willing to give all their profits at least twice over to avoid the publicity that would come from a full on trial. And, incidentally, this does not include any amount they are paying to buy off the family of the woman who was killed.

My.

So we can be pretty sure that there's much they just as soon wouldn't want aired. The information I have received over the years regarding the Big Dig, the "word on the street" as it were, said that the project was built with little regard for the quality of the work or the cost. Everything had to be done as quickly as possible so that a thin fiction of staying on schedule could be maintained. Other scuttlebutt includes plenty of work sub-contracted to incompetents based on their political connections or relations with executives at Bechtel or P-B. I really have no way of "knowing" that this is the case in a strict legal sense, but from my years of experience I'd bet a lot on it being so. Program managers, particularly the big firms, are little more than public relations firms, their employees are scolded at every turn to be "team players" meaning they are not to question things.

A typical person running a program managers' operations will be short on engineering skills but long on his ability to abuse employees and charm politicians. So keep an eye on the proceedings at the Big Dig. See how much they pay to keep their pefidity hidden.

Contracts

2007-09-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

There's been some stir lately about how contracting for Engineering services in government agencies is being abused. I don't think abused is the right concept. What's really happened is that the people involved have developed a well oiled system that maximizes profits while minimizing risk. I'd call it a conspiracy, emphasis on piracy.

Agencies and consultants will both insist that contracts are procured competitively. But it's not really competition, it's a beauty show. Well trained and rehearsed marketeers strive to convince agency people, government workers in the main, that they should be hired for a particular project. They dissemble, usually with a flashy power point program and sleek graphics, about their experience, dedication, and abilities. Sometimes they even lie. What always amuses me is how similar these presentations are. There's really nothing of substance on which to make a decision, so the race usually goes to the best theatrical show.

After the big decision is made, the marketeers generally are replaced by the financial types. Remember this: cost is not a factor in determining who gets selected. A selection is made and then the cost is negotiated. This racket still is protected by law in many states. The rationale is that the services are so specialized that there is only one firm who is best qualified to do the work. Price competition gives the managers heartburn. Contracts are usually negotiated on a cost reimbursement basis, in other words any costs incurred by the consultant must be reimbursed. These include all overhead costs. Consultants prefer to negotiate billing rates for their workers, thereby keeping their true costs hidden. A contract negotiated between a skilled consultant and a uninformed government employee can yield profits as high as 25%. Other times actual, verifiable cost plus a fee, another word for profit, are what is paid. The consultant is virtually assured a profit no matter how well or poorly he performs.

And it gets worse. I many cases consultant has a positive incentive to run up costs, particularly if billing rates are used. Since each unit billed increases profits, the more units, the more profit. Items purchased by the consultant are often also marked up for no reason other than to increase profits.

This is a lucrative business. Is it any wonder that Haliburton moved into this from riskier oil exploration?

Finally the actual contract itself generally shields the consultant from liability for all except the most egregious mistakes. Frequently, negligence is the measure that trips liability. Just know this: among the three large engineering firms active in Iraq, Haliburton, Bechtel, and Parsons, over $20 billion was billed to the U.S. government and precious little was actually built. Of that amount, at least a billion, and probably a lot more was pure profit. In previous wars, profiteering on this scale was considered treasonous and dealt with accordingly. This has not been the case under this administration in this war.

Air Travel

2007-09-06T14:17:00.000-07:00

It's now official. A story running in all the mainstream media outlets reports how air traffic delays are at an all time high. Don't you just love it when they report something that most people already know?

One wonders when the other shoe will fall. One thing that apparently is going to happen is they are going to a new air traffic control system. I suspect this is what's behind all the new found mainstream attention. Of all the fears associated with flying, the fear of dying in a crash has to be number one. New air traffic system? You can count on some published reports on how it will compromise safety and so forth. Thus a preemptive strike explaining how it will eliminate or a least reduce delays.

I don't really think the new system will compromise safety at all. Look at the way air traffic dropped after 9/11 and you will understand that the industry most certainly does not want any air crashes tied to it. So the new system (tied to GPS will likely deliver on what is advertised and help cut delays.

But they will come back. Air travel pretty much has a monopoly on public transit these days and it will only increase as the population does. My perception is that the delay problem is worse in Europe, even with a functioning rail network, largely because population is much more concentrated there. Why then do we not put resources into developing a rail network here?

Bay Bridge

2007-09-04T10:15:00.001-07:00

The Bay Bridge is a vital part of the roadway infrastructure here in the Bay Area. It connects San Francisco with the East Bay, the only such connection, and carries nearly 300,000 vehicles a day. In 1989 it was damaged by a 7.0 earthquake named Loma Prieta and closed for a month. Engineers determined that the eastern portion of the bridge was seismically unsafe and would have to be replaced. Eighteen years later we are still five years away from the completion of the replacement span. Nearly an entire generation will have passed.

One wonders then how important this project is. It took more than ten years merely to sort out what the replacement would look like and at least three more to iron out difficult design issues. This does not indicate any sense of urgency on the part of the decision makers. Looking at it dispassionately, the bridge stood for 50 years before it was damaged by an earthquake.

The Loma Prieta event resulted in exactly one death on the bridge. That's a pretty good record, one seismic fatality in what is now 68 years of operation. One month of down time due to earthquakes. Weighed against this is the scale of the bridge and its impact on the consciousness of all who see it, from whatever perspective. Much of the debate about what sort of bridge to build revolved around the issue of aesthetics versus cost.

Aesthetics won, I'm happy to report. In order for this to happen, a portion of the costs of the new bridge have been passed on to the users. Southern Californians insisted on this although they do not think it unfair that all Californians support their profligate use of automobiles by paying for their freeway projects.

In any event, the bridge was closed completely over the Labor Day weekend to accommodate construction and all those people in all those vehicles found another way to get around. By all accounts it worked pretty well, although there were no normal workdays in that time span and a lot of folks were out of town.

Caltrans, the public agency responsible for the bridge has been doing some pioneering type work on construction contracting and it paid off with this closure when their cooperative approached helped the contractor finish the work comfortably early. Everyone is happy and everyone looks good. Perhaps others will see the wisdom of this approach.

On time, on budget...NOT

2007-08-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

Every engineering management firm you talk too, especially if they are in marketing mode, and these days that's nearly all the time, will boast of their record of "on time, on budget" project delivery. And yet, a prestigious and widely read study out of Duke University shows that the vast majority of Engineering projects are neither. And it adds, most also fall short of their original scope too. Here's the scoop, the Dukies got it right, nearly every "on time, on budget" claim is bogus.

Managing a large engineering project is an extremely long and complex process involving thousands of people and dozens of entities, both public and private generally under the overall direction of a public agency whose mission is something other than capital project execution. By this I mean they are large transportation agencies, public utilities, educational institutions, or airports.

Traditionally then, they have hired outside assistance to perform these tasks under their general direction. There are generally three broad phases to any project - planning, design, construction. Clever entrepreneurs have set out to define other phases, but these are in fact sub-sets of the big three and need not be discussed here. Each phase is performed by individuals and firms who specialize in the kinds of tasks required for that phase. Over the years ambitious firms have attempted to expand to cover more than one, with results that are generally pretty dismal.

In recent years, however, the concept of Program Management has arisen from some of the larger Engineering firms such as Bechtel, Parsons, and Halliburton. It is useful to ponder what Program management purports to be, why these firms chose to move in this direction, and what Program Management adds to a project, if anything.

Major crime enterprises, the Mafia if you will, have always moved aggressively from illegal to legal activities. The reason is simple, risk is lowered. Any financial adviser will tell you about the risk-reward curve. The higher the reward you seek (return on investment) the bigger risk you have to take. The lotteries are a simple example of this. If you win, you win big, but the most likely result is you'll throw a lot of money away. All business more or less follows this rule. Oil companies get very rich when they are going well, but the business has a lot of unknowns. Ford and Coca Cola, two giants of American industry, took risks in recent memory and lost. I speak of course of the Edsel and New Formula Coke.

Engineering work, particularly design work, has become increasingly risky in the past 25 years. Liabilities for faulty designs or designs that just didn't work well have increased spectacularly. It has become more and more difficult to predict these costs and to recover them from future clients. Conversely, Program Management was conceived and structured to minimize risk to the firm.

Program Managers present themselves to an agency embarking on a large capital program, often the only one that will be done during the professional lifetime of its managers, as their one stop, fix all answer to all the problems and the unknowns that are about to occur. A couple of things should be noted here, first most agencies begin planning for large capital programs after it's too late to do them well, and second the governing boards of the agencies are typically political appointees with little or no expertise in capital programs. Oh, and a third: the programs are usually underfunded.

So the agency hires the Program Manager and, lacking the resources to manage them well, turns all decision making authority over to them. And here's the rub: the Program Manager has no incentive to deliver the program on time or on budget. The longer the program runs, the more work they have for idle and marginal employees, the more over budget the greater their profit. Profit is almost always tied to total cost.

Delays and cost overruns occur, the agency becomes unhappy. Explanations are demanded. This is where the firm displays their real talent, providing the artful explanation, generally involving some outside force that couldn't have been foreseen, and redefining time and budget to demonstrate how the program is still adhering to both. Agencies are also happy if the explanation flies, gets them off the hook. The key of course is maintaining a lock on the expertise.

i shall be deconstructing some of the elements of this scam in future posts.

Bridges in the News

2007-08-27T14:20:00.000-07:00

There are reports today that the authorities have closed an interstate highway bridge near Memphis. The reason given is rapid settlement at one of the piers. I will state unequivocally that had this problem been detected a month ago that bridge would not have been closed. Although the closed bridge carries I-40 across the river, a similar bridge for I-55 is available near by, so the inconvenience to traffic will be minimized. The report also notes that the I-40 bridge is expected to be open in a few days. We will watch this one.

Back in Minneapolis the state and city came to a remarkably fast resolution on the issue of light rail for the replacement I-35W bridge. Of interest is the fact that Federal money cannot be used to fund the structural upgrade light rail will necessitate. In any event what we should learn from this is that politicians of differing parties and differing priorities can work together when the stakes are high enough.

Locally, a new bridge, total cost in excess of a billion bucks, opened on I-680 across the Carquinez Straits. As near as I can tell it will save a few minutes off the commutes of about 2% of the region's population. Needless to say, this project took many years and ended up costing a lot more than originally estimated. What I find particularly interesting is the hoopla surrounding this event with the predictable speeches by the predictable politicians. Not to be a wet blanket, or even a cynic, but I hearby predict that the bridge will be obsolete within ten years.

Minnesota has it right, do some things to improve mass transit in the rush to provide more freeways. There has to be a limit to space available to accommodate the automobile. Look at large cities all over the world and they are moving towards keeping motor vehicles out of heavily developed areas. There is a limit to sprawl development, too. We haven't reached it yet, but we'll be there sooner than you think.

Katrina

2007-08-25T12:28:00.001-07:00

In pondering the events that transpired in New Orleans two years ago this week what is really shocking is not the lack of governmental response to suffering, our governments don't respond to suffering any more, but the neglect of such a vital item of infrastructure as the seawall system there.

We all pretty much understand what New Orleans is all about from a cultural perspective, home to many poor minority people, playground for drunken students in February, and somewhat classy alternative to Las Vegas when we set out to be naughty. But from a national economic perspective, its ports are an integral part of the engine that keeps us afloat.

The Mississippi River drains about half of the United States and the portion it drains produces most of the grain and livestock products we ship overseas. This is a huge part of our foreign exports and one that we can ill do without. Yet the Army Corps of Engineers, charged with maintaining the Engineering works that protect our ports failed in its job.

What is happened here, among other failures, is a failure to properly prioritize assets. Since business schools came into vogue in the Eighties, the emphasis has been on what is measurable and not on what is most important. Thus the Corps fell into the trap of "measuring" its performance in terms of percentages of particular tasks accomplished. The seawalls in New Orleans were lumped with similar facilities across the nation and percentages of all facilities being built or maintained was the criteria.

They are not alone in this and, as we have seen in the case of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, these percentages denoting good performance don't really mean much, they are, in fact, quite flexible. An agency can redefine good performance on its own with only cursory oversight. In the process, managers who do well in meeting these measurable goals are rewarded above those making sound judgments.

The neglect of the seawalls was particularly egregious given their importance to the nation's economy. The Corps has known for nearly half a century that the Mississippi River delta is very precarious and has chosen stop gap measures and has scrimped on maintenance anyway. One day the river will change its course dramatically and we will not be prepared. This is not simply a matter of protecting the lives and livelihoods of a lot of poor people, or of protecting a tourist attraction. This will have serious economic and geopolitical impacts when it happens.

Riding the rails

2007-08-23T17:31:00.001-07:00

The automobile is a wonderful invention. I've owned one throughout my adult life and sometimes two. There are few things I enjoy more than a long road trip covering unlikely distances in few days. I've done more than a thousand miles in a single day and consider six hundred to be a baseline number.

Beyond my fetishes, a car is pretty much required if you are to live in this country, particularly the arid west where distances are long and other forms of transport simply not available. Much is heard these days about the death of the automobile era, but don't believe a word of it. Technology is now available to keep us safely in our vehicles and happy long after the last drop of oil has been burned.

That said, we really should be developing and building rail transport systems starting right away. These should take three forms, urban rail transit systems similar to what exist in New York, London, and elsewhere; commuter trains like the newer transit systems in San Francisco, Atlanta, and Washington; and inter-city train systems on the European model.

The car as prime means of travel grew here largely because of the amount of land available. The vast continent provided ample land for the people and our history developed around the myth of the individual yeoman sustaining self and family on land he owned. This morphed in the second half of the twentieth century into a suburban tract which provided ample space for a person to maintain the myth.

Cities grew up during the years of the Industrial Age, but many of them have failed and are often viewed as places for misfits and suspicious classes of people. It's axiomatic that cities are populated by the very rich and very poor with no place for the vibrant middle. Such is the paradigm of the past 60 years or so, the post-war years.

More and more however this model is proving unsustainable. Cheap power is no longer available. In the more attractive areas sprawl development has become more and more difficult. We are learning that land, like oil, is not an infinite resource. Long commutes from depressing suburbs along pollution soaked corridors are not attractive to more and more people. Infill is the new game.

I think the European models of mass transport are looming on the horizon as a solution to many of these ills. Already in the Bay Area BART has shown itself to be a heavily used commuter service bringing armies of workers from distant suburbs quickly and efficiently. The New York subway system does the same. Both of these are reaching critical junctures in their lives. rather than using our transportation dollars on more freeways that aren't free, we should be diverting them to strengthening these systems and developing new ones. Those that insist on driving should finance their extravagance through toll roads and the like.

More Weasel Words

2007-08-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

A lot of interesting stuff is coming out in the wake of the I-35W bridge failure in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Now we learn that that state's transportation bureaucracy quietly lowered its goals for bridge maintenance in 2003 from 65% to 55% of bridges receiving a "good" or better rating. Here's a wonderful quote from one of the top bureaucrats there: "Once we started looking at what others were doing, we realized that 65 percent was an unrealistic number." In other words, if we can show that we're no worse than others, it's okay.

The 65% goal was set in 1997 when actual inspections showed that 62% of Minnesota's bridges were rated "good" or better. By the time 2003 rolled around and the bureaucracy determined that 65 was an unrealistic number, their performance has dropped to 52% One wonders what happened in the intervening six years.

One thing that happened is the bureaucrats were advising the policy leadership that they were having problems keeping up because of "dwindling financial resources", a set of weasel words that are hereby nominated for immediate elevation into the Weasel Word Hall of Fame. We all know, of course, that it means we need more money or we can't do this.

Recall now how the Governor of Minnesota vetoed a gas tax increase that may have enabled the bureaucrats to meet the more ambitious goal. I think he should be reminded of this sad fact daily, but what is even better is the massive memory loss currently being suffered by policy makers across the political spectrum. None of them has the vaguest memory of this reduction occurring!

The reduction in goal was done very quietly, one paragraph buried deep inside the department's budget request. In fairness it should be reported that the latest data available show that Minnesota improved its "good" or better rating to 54% in 2006, in other words they came very close to meeting their new lower goal.

But what about those "others" who Minnesota wishes to be compared with? Well, neighboring Michigan established a goal of 95% "good" rating for freeway bridges and 85% for other bridges by 2008. Since then they have gone from 63% to 87% good. How, you may ask, did they do this? Well, first off they enacted a 4 cents per gallon increase in their gas tax and then they postponed some expansion for maintenance. Here's a really outstanding quote from a Michigan Department of Transportation bureaucrat: "We are working (under) the theory that you don't put an addition on your house while the roof is leaking."

Must be a tax and spend liberal.

Utah, always a place where good sense seems to abound in government, has established a goal of 65% very good and 25% good and by all indications they are succeeding. But most states are like Minnesota, doing very little, hoping that nothing bad happens, and keeping their heads well buried in the sand. How is your state doing?

London Smog

2007-08-16T09:35:00.002-07:00

The protests in London against the expansion of Heathrow Airport bring a couple of points into focus.

The first of these is the dismal record of on-time departure of flights at Heathrow, an occurrence that's become more and more common at large International facilities. The Evening Standard reports that on a recent morning every single flight departed late, 14% by more than an hour. This is attributed to overcrowding and a poor record of baggage handling. I would suggest a third cause, cheap tickets fueling demand for more and more flights.

The response, as always, is to build more capacity. More capacity will create more opportunities to add flights and lower prices in a perpetual spiral. The demand for cheaper tickets also exacerbates the very causes of the overcrowding, namely poor baggage handling and too many planes for too few gates. Expansion plans, or any plans to deal with the overcrowding, are generally started only when the situation reaches crisis proportions. Much easier to sell under those conditions.

The next would be exactly that problem that the protesters are pointing out; the destruction of the natural and community environments that expansion will foster. Airplanes have been identified as a major contributor to global warming, air pollution, and the destruction of the ozone layer. And the Heathrow expansion would eliminate homes and businesses in the area. While, presumably, the people dislocated will be compensated, perhaps even fairly, the natural environment will, again, be viewed as a "commons", something for the developers to utilize without cost.

So the trade off is cheap airline tickets for serious travel inconvenience and ongoing environmental degradation. The sad fact is that an overwhelming majority will favor the cheap tickets. This will not change until we recognize that we need to pay full price for our life styles.

For whom the toll bells

2007-08-15T11:41:00.000-07:00

We who live in the Western United States don't care much for toll roads or tolls of any kind. They are fairly common in the east and parts of the Midwest but the ethos in California which, deal with it, dominates the west is that tolls are somehow un-American. There are tolls on bridges, primarily in the Bay Area but no others. The issue came up recently in San Francisco when a proposal was made to finance improvements to the US Highway 101 approach to the Golden Gate Bridge.

There were predictable objections to the idea, the crux of them being that we already pay for roads via gas tax, a toll would amount to double taxation. My own feelings on the matter are decidedly mixed, however, if forced to choose, I would choose having toll roads over not having them.

With toll roads the authority that owns them (generally some quasi-governmental body although not necessarily) could collect sufficient money to operate them and to maintain them in good condition. The toll payers would absolutely insist on it.

Americans, and particularly Westerners, have abundantly shown that they will pay just about any price to travel in their automobiles. Just look what happens every time the price of gas goes up sharply. There is a spate of media attention including quotes from a few people complaining about the increase. Then nothing, business goes on as usual. Gas price hikes are justified in the public mind because they are perceived as the workings of a free market.

This perception, I believe, would also attach to toll roads, in fact it might be good if they are perceived as being operated by the private sector assuming guarantees of access for all. Set out to increase the gas tax and be prepared for war. Increase the cost of a toll road and be seen as an efficient free market.

Yes, it's a bit of a sham, but still an idea worthy of our consideration. The toll bridges in the Bay Area are much better maintained than the rest of the transportation system and that should be attributed to the stream of funds they have dedicated solely to them. The weakness they have is that they are still subject to political pressures.

So why do I have mixed feelings? Because a corollary to the idea that toll roads would be better maintained is the likelihood that other roads would be more poorly maintained. This raises the scepter of dual systems, one for the affluent, the other for the rest of us. But I don't believe this has been the case in those areas where toll roads are fairly common.

You want cheap, you get cheap

2007-08-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

This has been a difficult year for air travelers. The popular press has been full of horror stories of people stuck on immobile aircraft for six, eight, ten hours. This is indeed a very unpleasant thought. The latest such incident was Saturday at Los Angeles International Airport(LAX), one of the world's busiest. News reports tell of how a computer failure at the US Customs and Border Control agency delayed several thousand arriving passengers for up to ten hours. Many of these apparently were left stranded on their arrival aircraft for much of this time.

The news stories in the aftermath of the LAX incident sound very familiar. Many quotes from disgruntled victims, some with hard luck stories of varying intensity, quotes from the agency spokesperson to the effect that this is all very unprecedented, that it could not have been anticipated, that it's very unfortunate, the problem will most surely be fixed soon. Also included are vague explanations regarding what went wrong. This is of course essentially the same news stories we read last winter when some unlucky people were trapped for long hours on immobile airplanes, ostensibly because of bad weather.

Except for those who suffer through the indignities, no one seems to notice these stories much. We read them, shudder at the thought of being one of the victims, and move on to the next outrage. Shelf life is about a day, maybe two if it happens in your town. We accept it as inevitable. And we may as well, because the way the air transportation infrastructure operates these days, you can expect events like these to continue and probably increase in frequency in the future.

After deregulation in the eighties, air travelers clearly indicated that what we wanted in air travel was cheap and cheaper. And, as it generally does when it comes to a discretionary activity, the market responded very nicely. New airlines were born and some prospered and grew by providing basic transportation between selected lucrative routes without food, legroom, or convenience. Redundancies were eliminated and ancillary services were cut to the bone. Established airlines scrambled to survive and some didn't. The results are in and, indeed, we have some of the lowest air fares in history. And not much else.

Delays occur for a lot of individual reasons, but by scratching the surface we see the cheap and cheaper ethos in just about every case. The Customs agency delays upgrading its equipment because the airlines and passengers complain that it would raise prices. In a similar vein, airlines have no back-up equipment if a plane must be taken out of service. Airports delay needed improvements because no one wants to pay for them.

And, not surprisingly, the airports are woefully overcrowded and inefficient. Planes that leave a gate in a snowstorm sit on the tarmac, there's no gate for them to return to. And, who knows, the weather may improve to the point where the plane can leave saving the costs of cancellation. Remember this when it's your turn to sit in a hot, stinky plane with a bunch of caterwauling children and moaning old folks for six hours or so.

The Weasel Words

2007-08-11T16:06:00.000-07:00

On August 1 the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed suddenly and catastrophically dumping dozens of vehicles into the Mississippi River and stranding many more. There were an as yet undetermined number of people killed and dozens more injured. A vital transportation link in this major American city was destroyed.

We take our infrastructure for granted in this country with not much consciousness of how important it is to our health and well being. Consider the upheaval we in the Bay Area experienced when the Bay Bridge was out of service for a month in the wake of the Loma Prieta earthquake. People in the Twin Cities area will be without a similar transit link for a longer period.

Imagine the effect of losing our potable water supply for a month, or even a week. What would happen if a major sewerage treatment plant was knocked out of service? Some ten years ago when I was working in downtown San Francisco, a garden-variety construction screw-up knocked out the electricity for six hours. Things came to a halt. Six hours! Imagine six weeks.

What the bridge in Minneapolis shows us, or should show us, is that all our infrastructure is vulnerable. Knowledgeable people working on these things have been saying for some time that we’re not maintaining our infrastructure and we’re moving into peril as a consequence. Yet, other than the typical run of bloviation from the political leadership, little gets done.

The I-35W bridge, along with over 70,000 others have been deemed structurally deficient. There’s been a lot of speculation about what that means and doesn’t mean.

What it means in essence is that some engineers looked at the bridges and found areas of potential structural weakness. They were then faced with a dilemma of how to report their findings. They could not in good conscience say the bridge was okay, because obviously it wasn’t. Nor could they call for the bridge to be closed until repaired because 1) it would not happen and; 2) they would never get work inspecting bridges again.

So they said the bridges were “structurally deficient” which is weasel wording for “somebody should do something here, we don’t know what but in case something bad happens, our asses are covered.” This is not meant to denigrate these people, just to say that they know how their business works and that it works by denial and deferment.

Anyone who has worked in the infrastructure business knows that no one wants to put money or effort into maintenance and repair. Everyone loves a shiny new project. They put plaques on them with the names of all the folks involved. They hold dedication ceremonies that you can watch on the evening news. Politicians who happened to be in office at the time cite the project when they go for higher office. By contrast, maintenance and repair are orphans.

And then when something like I-35W happens there is a run of concern, studies are commissioned, blue ribbon panels make reports. Will anything change? Here’s hoping, we will be watching, you should be too because it might be your bridge next time. What’s needed most is a commitment of more money. In Minneapolis, I-35W was scheduled for replacement albeit at some date well into the future – again asses were at least partially covered. Had there been the money available maybe it would have been replaced in time, who can tell?

It’s interesting that a number of reports have pointed out that the Governor of Minnesota had recently vetoed a gas tax increase that might have provided some money for this work. While we can all be sure the good Governor now regrets this, we also damn well know that vetoing tax increases plays well politically. This will change only when we face further infrastructure failures, such as the bridges, and that we need to pay full price for the way we live.

More later.