Just some short notes, since we really have no idea what the next President is going to send to Congress on infrastructure. I’d love to speculate, but I have almost nothing to speculate on!
Federal
State
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New York City’s MTA finally opened the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway, 100 years after it was first proposed. It cost a ridonkulous lot of money, and no one really seems to know why.Some of the reasons given are its depth (to avoid tangling with utilities and “disrupting” the city above as less expensive “cut and cover” would), expensive labor (a common claim of Republicans, never mind that we pay about what Europeans pay their construction labor and European projects are far less expensive), too many environmental studies (another bugaboo of Republicans, and increasingly, Democrats who want shit done fast), NIMBYs (although to be honest, NIMBYs are partially why it’s so deep), Manhattan just being “expensive”, graft on the part of the local construction industry and on and on and on. I sure hope they figure out how to build Phase 2 without it being ridiculously expensive (they won’t.)
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Also in New York, the Port Authority wants to rebuild its bus terminal in Manhattan, and found $3.5 billion to get that process started (ultimately, it’ll cost $10 billion). Los Angeles could build an entire new line with dozens of stations for the first price, and three for the second. How do I know this? They’ve done it.
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If you live in Pennsylvania you have one more day to offer comments on the state’s automated vehicle testing policy. Legislation is pending in the state House and Senate.
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This hasn’t been updated since December, but here is all the legislation in the states about autonomous vehicles.
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These story maps on household income from ESRI are pretty cool and tell quite a story---and it’s a national dataset, not just the cities listed. Play with it a bit. There’s a diary in there—wink wink, nudge nudge!
Other
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Circle of Blue is a blog all about water and you should read it.
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Strong Towns is an infrastructure blog that you should also read. I will say it’s got an agenda, and its agenda is don’t build anything new (especially roads) until what exists is fixed first. I happen to personally subscribe to that agenda.
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Yup, another blog, with high level stuff for those interested. I certainly am giving everyone a lot of homework.
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Australian television has a hilarious show about a fictional agency charged with building infrastructure. It airs in Australia as “Utopia” and on American Netflix as “Dreamland”. It’s pretty on the nose, even if Aussies do things a bit differently than we do here (but not that differently---I recognized a lot, if not all of what I do in the show.)
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Piketty blogs in English now, which reminds me I should finish that book of his sometime.
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This report is a couple years old but you should still read it anyway. It’s about public spending on transportation and water infrastructure, 1956 to 2014.
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Not transportation but here’s how to find your state’s constitution.
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Old article, not sure how much of it I agree with, but I wonder if USDOT will take the direction suggested after 1/20. Or not.
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The Hype(r)loop people seem to have found some suckers customers in Dubai. I predict it will work but will cost far, far more than the stans* scream about on the internet. Better the UAE than us getting fleeced, I say.
And we’re done. Until next time!
*stan, slang, taken from the Eminem song “Stan”, which was about a vociferous, intrusive, and eventually dangerous fan