The American Jobs Plan Will Make Our Infrastructure Crisis Worse
strongtowns.org
strongtowns.org
A nice SFH, big yard, garage filled with tools, good schools, and quiet winding streets all tucked almost a mile from commercial business. After a couple decades of high density living I couldn’t be happier.
That's the point of Strong Towns: not that there's anything wrong with single family houses in and of themselves, but that the way our economy is structured right now, they usually don't pay for themselves.
I believe NYC may be a partial exception to this as I know it has local income tax (which is very rare), but I'm not sure if they charge that to people who don't also live in the city.
Other exceptions are some towns that have almost no residential and a lot of commercial, and collect almost all their income from sales tax.
But, again, those are the few exceptions, not the norm.
Income tax is typically based on both where you live and where you work. Property tax is based on where you own property. Payroll taxes (state unemployment, etc.) is mostly based on where you work. Sales/use tax is based on where you physically shop or where you live for other shopping.
2. property taxes go to fund schools/utilities/services - and it makes sense to send taxes to where you live, not work. I want to fund schools where my kids go to, this seems perfectly logical to me. It would be a huge waste of resources to do otherwise.
Heavy trucks actually do the majority of damage to road infrastructure.
From the linked article: The registration fee seems steep. However,a B-Double can cause, per kilometre travelled, 20,000 times the road wear and tear that a family car does
https://theconversation.com/trucks-are-destroying-our-roads-...
If you live in NY and work in NYC you pay NY state taxes.
If you live in NJ and work in NYC you pay NY state taxes. I believe Connecticut works the same way.
NY state taxation helps out NYC.
NYC has a broad, implicit tax base well beyond the city borders in addition to their tax base inside them.
And, it’s not like the people that live in the burbs are the only ones that benefit. Those roads and highways are the same ones used to ship food to cities.
But for basic services such as schools, fire, and sewer, what matters is geographic (horizontal) compactness. The more compact the area, the better the economies of scale, reducing per capita costs. However, at some point vertical density (i.e. building up) can overcome economies of scale provided by compactness by increasing infrastructure costs. Thus the per capita cost curve can end up being U-shaped within a fixed geographic area. See https://www.cgoodman.com/files/papers/national-sprawl-expend...
Housing has a similar U-shaped cost curve: skyscrapers have very high per unit construction and maintenance costs because of the need to switch to steel and other more expensive techniques. AFAIU, the most efficient form of housing in the U.S. is mid-rise developments, approx. 3 to 6 stories, though it varies according to available materials and allowed construction techniques. See https://urbanize.city/la/post/25-solutions-builder%E2%80%99s... (EDIT: Actually, that article describes the "missing middle" as 2-3 story developments, not 3-6. 3-6 is probably closer to what older, denser cities like San Francisco need more of, as most single-family homes are already tightly spaced 2-3 story buildings.)
Advocates of density from industry and academia are often misunderstood as demanding the type of developments you see in the inner core of large cities, such as skyscrapers. (As opposed to cityphile advocates who want live above French bakeries and near subway stations.[1]) But small rural and suburban towns can also be dense, and historically they were dense, even in the United States. If you've traveled enough around the U.S., especially on the old U.S. Highway system and away from the U.S. Interstate system (because Interstates were built to avoid small towns and thus in the present day most any town near an Interstates was likely developed after the 1950s), you'll see that most U.S. towns were built with relatively compact neighborhoods hugging dense commercial areas. (Especially true in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. Patterns of development in the American South seemed to have been historically distinct, a direct and indirect consequence of plantation culture.) And this was the pattern even after the U.S. became a car culture, though before white flight, enabled by the Interstate system, fundamentally changed expectations regarding geographic proximity to work and commercial services.
Perhaps the better term to use when promoting more cost efficient development is "compact", not "density". Too much density isn't cheap, though often desirable nonetheless. But when it comes to RoI, the characteristic to strive for is compactness. Having two skyscrapers a quarter mile apart with nothing in between is stupid. What you want is compactness, which in addition to providing economies of scale also, politically, minimizes the ability for developers and owners to externalize inefficient infrastructure costs; and then let the market decide vertical density.
[1] OTOH, this describes Paris, a city of mostly mid-rises. I think it's just that Americans in general, even urbanites, have a skewed perception of density informed by our culture, such as the prominence of major cities like New York and Chicago, and especially their downtowns, in depicting urbanity.
Roads that serve few cars.
Electricity infrastructure from the power plant to the suburbs.
Water infrastructure (pipes need to bring clean water in and sewage out)
Not to mention the racist history of the reasons for subsidizing suburbs. White flight followed by redlining and deeds that prevented suburban housing from being sold to African-Americans. Followed by a neglect of city infrastructure as black residents moved in.
Edit: Since I’m being downvoted for daring to suggest that suburbs have a racist history, I’ll leave a recent stratchery article to explain.
The inverse is true for dense urban units: per-unit costs for urban units are far lower than the per-unit taxes.
{1} (roads, sewers, water treatment and distribution, waste collection...)
{2} (repaving once every 20 years, repainting once a year, repairing sewer pipes every 40-60 years, water pipes every 80 (unless they were installed in the 50s-80s, in which case every 30), etc)
That almost completely destroys the small town argument because cities don’t need to pay for the education or healthcare of their suburban workers. An office building is a net gain where a the same space devoted to housing often costs the local government more in services.
Do you have some stats or links for municipal (or equivalent) tax raising/spending?
https://usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2021USbl_22bc...
Just one example.
But that's not what happens. Generally the town center area (which is more developed) pays quite a lot more in taxes than the outlying areas, and the surplus generated there is used to cover the cost of all the infrastructure that enables the people who live on the outskirts to have town infrastructure and town prices with a rural lifestyle. And that transfer of money to sustain the rural area is why the town doesn't have the money to build a new library or school, and needs state and federal grant programs to fix the water tower.
If you want to know why just about every American small town was building beautiful city halls, schools, libraries, etc. before WW2, and afterwards they mostly bombed out, it has a lot to do with deciding to spend their money maintaining roads to scattered residential developments on the outskirts instead of investing that money in other things. That's not the only reason, but it's a major factor.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/27/how-much-does-...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/2/5/suburban-infras...
Subsidized in terms of infrastructure, because running power and water and sewer and roads out to each individual house is way more expensive than doing it for condo or apartment buildings in urban centers.
Subsidized in terms of infrastructure again, because when he inevitably wants to drive into the city, there has to be parking waiting for him, which is land that could otherwise be put to better use.
Subsidized in terms of direct payments, because federal tax law provides huge benefits to homeowners via mortgage deductions and depreciation rules, which disproportionately means middle-class or higher people living in single-family homes.
https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2020/01/you-will-never...
> That's the point of Strong Towns: not that there's anything wrong with single family houses in and of themselves, but that the way our economy is structured right now, they usually don't pay for themselves.
You know what else is subsidized? Farms. Should we stop paying for them?
Sports facilities, community centers for youth and elderly, hospitals, homeless shelters. Lots of subsidization to go around.
There are 50 states, and most of them have single family dwellings. Some not even near a city. It turns out a lot of people like to live this way. They're not leeching off of the economy - they're contributing to it.
Single family homes are a pattern of American life. They're not going away anytime soon.
Don't force everyone to live in a city. It's not unlike the bicyclists trying to tell everyone they should bike instead of drive, which simply isn't going to work for most of the people in this country.
Edit: I was downvoted faster than it was even possible to read my comment. I spotted a typo as I submitted and immediately went to edit it,
"0 points by echelon 0 minutes ago"
Wow, HN.
You know something I really like? Lobster. You know what would be great for me? If the government made a program to subsidize lobster farming and distribution, so that lobster cost $3/meal instead of $20. If it cost that I would probably have Lobster 5 times a week!
But, it doesn't, so... I don't eat that much Lobster. I still love it though, and there's nothing wrong with that! Nobody should force me to stop eating Lobster.
Like, what is your "I don't care for subsidies" threshold?
People that have a higher standard of living than me seems to be a reasonable cutoff, why should I live in a small apartment but pay for your gluttonous lifestyle in a McMansion?
I'm all for a bit of wealth redistribution, but from poor to rich is the wrong direction.
This is a mock term from detractors.
Many large homes cost less than a condo. A mortgage on a home you own is sometimes less than rent in the city. For something you'll never own.
I don't get what your gripe is. You can even build a large home with your own hands if you have the skill and time. It's not like it's some unnatural thing that is going to lead to the collapse of civilization.
> People that have a higher standard of living than me seems to be a reasonable cutoff
> why should I live in a small apartment but pay for your gluttonous lifestyle in a McMansion
This strikes me as jealousy. I'm glad you're not making decisions for the rest of us.
This planet is a stochastic mix of people trying lots of different things. Most of it is harmless. Live and let be. You're not going to solve the world's problems by pointing fingers. Humanity isn't going anywhere.
I think that your justification is lacking, however. As though there are no positive externalities for suburban living (there are), or even negative externalities for the other items (there are).
I'm not sure I trust your assessment when you identify only negative externalities to suburban living, frankly.
When the thing being subsidized has no benefit to society.
'Subsidizing' the impoverished is helping another human being, and is always worthwhile. Healthcare for all is enlightened self-interest because I do not know what future illnesses I may have, and what they may cost, so I'd rather have everyone subsidized than risk myself not having access to future treatments.
Education and the public fire departments help build better societies.
But what benefit do car-based suburbs give to society as a whole? Can you least three benefits that we can discuss?
- suburban areas largely "subsidize" the cost of education, which far exceeds the cost of roads and utility infrastructure subsidized by the cities. The quality of schools in suburban areas is also largely higher than in cities.
- suburban areas have anywhere from 1/7 - 1/3 the crime rates of cities—even accounting for socioeconomic factors—which reduces personal and social harm. There is also vastly faster emergency response in suburban areas which save lives and stop culprits.
- mood disorders (anxiety, depression, etc) are about 40% more common in city dwellers then suburbanites, and that's strongly linked to the differing environments.
If the cost and quality of education, reduction of crime, and mental health aren't benefits to society as a whole, I don't know what is.
Please understand, I do not suggest that city living is "bad". I do, however, suggest that diversity of living environments is good, for the individual and for society as a whole.
* https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/the-ur...
I live in Toronto, Canada, and we probably have as much variation with-in the city as between the suburban and urban areas given that different neighbourhoods with-in the city have different average incomes.
Access to green spaces does help help in many ways, but that may be countered by the lack of activity in car-centric areas:
* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-11/the-publi...
Further, lower density building necessities eating up more land for the same population than higher density. You're paving over the very 'green' land that is providing benefits in the first place.
And 'urban living' also exists on a spectrum: it is not necessary to design things as scrunched together as (say) Manhattan. Brooklyn and Queen's (for example) can support walkable neighbourhoods with useful public transit (and cycling), while having SFH, garages/lanes, backyards, etc.
I'm less against 'real' rural living than suburban design. The post-WW2 suburbs just seem to be the worst of both worlds.
Suburbs are exactly the opposite. It's not just that they're expensive, it's that everyone on planet Earth is worse off for them existing. There is absolutely no rational reason for the government to subsidize things that have negative externalities.
This is hyperbole.
Suburbs are not negative externalities. They work to the benefit of the massive communities living within them.
People can raise their kids with large, private lawns. Have pools, cook outs, outdoor activities. Lots of private space to relax.
Hasn't Covid taught us that suburbs have tremendous merit? Cities are cramped and lonely hellscapes during the pandemic.
Beyond that, the objective function for society is not to cram as many humans into a sardine can as possible. If we were trying to optimize life on earth, life would be rigid and unpalatable.
I thought we learned the opposite. With offices closed city centres weren't quite so cramped and living in the inner city during a harsh lockdown gave me quite a few more social options than those in the suburbs. I could go for a walk (leisure or shopping) and catch up with most of my social circle, we could meet in parks and at times had larger groups gathering for drinks. In the suburbs there was much less overlap between people due to the lower density.
> the objective function for society is not to cram as many humans into a sardine can as possible
One of the major points Strong Towns tries to get across is about zoning, there's no need to be crammed in like sardines, this is just an artifact of strange zoning laws that don't allow much more ideal densities like 3-6 story brick buildings that are reasonably spacious.
Everyone on planet Earth who doesn't live in a suburb, plus many of those who do, except for some people who make their living servicing the inefficiencies of suburbs, is worse off for suburbs existing.
Better?
To me, though, that's the biggest thing that puts the lie to the suburban lifestyle thing. Most of the people who want to live there don't want any more people moving out as soon as their neighborhood is finished, because they know it'll just mean more traffic congestion, noise, pollution, etc., and the things that attracted them to the suburbs will be diminished. The suburban pattern just doesn't scale well.
Sadly that is one of the easier problems to fix. Just build on a grid of small streets (or if you don't like grids, an interconnected web of curvy streets is fine too) and don't live giant gaps and the whole thing scales a lot better. The financial and environmental impacts are harder problems to solve.
Nevermind the shirk for the value of diversity—both geographically and functionally—they've optimized the life out of life and gosh darn it, so can you.
Sure, subsidize things they like—green tech, social reeducation, space travel, even their subscription streaming movie platforms—but those backwards folks out in the boondocks really gotta go.
All 125 million of em.
I'll be honest, I've lived all over the country in some of the most diverse, varied places. And despite the trope of the knuckle dragging country folk, I've never met a more bigoted bunch than city dwellers.
It was fantastic and convenient and everyone loved it. Unfortunately, it was also wildly unprofitable so it went out of business.
Yes, it can be very nice to enjoy things that burn through more money than they generate, but those things simply are not going to last, no matter how much you like them. No matter how much they are a "pattern of life". That which cannot sustain itself, dies.
> You know what else is subsidized? Farms. Should we stop paying for them?
Not a valid comparison. Farms get subsidized to prevent supply and demand swings from creating price shocks and people starving to death. Not because growing food for people to eat is a fundamentally unprofitable endeavor.
[1] https://www.heritage.org/taxes/commentary/farm-subsidies-vs-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_for_the_rich_and_cap...
[4] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/12/31/790261705/fa...
[…]
> Don't force everyone to live in a city. It's not unlike the bicyclists trying to tell everyone they should bike instead of drive, which simply isn't going to work for most of the people in this country.
What practical benefit(s) do the suburbs bring to society? Why should society pay the costs of them when they are so wasteful from land use, health (due to all the driving), climate change, etc?
Farms have been subsidized for years, even before the modern car-based suburbs were invented: urban dwellers paid higher prices for telephones and electricity to build out the infrastructure in rural areas in the early 1900s.
But there is no practical reason to subsidize car-based suburbs when you can have (detached) single-family homes, with backyards (with garages/lanes), that are built at densities that can support walkable neighbourhoods and sustain transit. Especially since lot sizes have been shrinking for years and many modern suburban homes are no bigger many urban ones; see this 2019 Cheddar video:
Further, Education and it’s associated pension and healthcare costs are by far local governments biggest expense so office buildings are a much better deal for local governments than housing. This gets reflected in zoning where many local governments actively discourage people moving into them.
Local governments are responding to local issues. Some cities are actively zoning to discourage people living in them because they don’t want to fund more schools. Office buildings are in effect more profitable than condos when a state and local government is primarily funded via property taxes. And guess what Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming have no income taxes.
Please share your superpower.
My apologies to the OP.
Btw, one little-understood aspect of this is how much of the problem is created by upvoters. A comment like the GP reads very differently when it is upvoted to the top of the thread than when it's floating somewhere in the middle. I've occasionally had this happen to my own posts in the past (not so much with the dang account, but an older one) and was shocked to see how my own comment came across in a way that I hadn't intended.
The onus is still on commenters to omit things that can come across that way, but the problems in threads are at least as much caused by upvoters. It's a co-creation, and the worse outcomes are usually not one that any individual intends.
Probably not. But you won't know until it falls apart.
The water where I live is supplied by a municipal utility district, and this particular one is involved in a lot of projects. They have regular meetings which are public and recorded, and everything is well maintained.
From what I hear, bigger cities do have financial problems, especially when the population decreases. (I think Detroit's had a pretty rough time of it.)
What do you mean?
However, until strongtowns can figure out a politically palatable way to convince the denizens of these kinds of towns to shut down and move, it's just ranting into the breeze.
I mean, look at what it took to get people out of Centralia, PA where you could die suddenly and miserably.
Good luck with anything less draconian.
I’ve been around the global block and having a sfh, good schools (always subjective), quiet streets, and a yard are all possible with less scale while being more interconnected. Communities in the US just have to want it. Mid-level density can exist.
Sounds like the neighbourhood I grew up in… in the middle of a major city:
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+...
You can live in a decently dense city, which can sustain transit and have schools and parts with-in walking distance and big offices with-in cycling distance, without having to live in Manhattan-like densities.
Americans are used to SFHs having large front yards, more space around their property and very large, landscaped backyards with pools, fountains and other adornments.
2 car garages are standard with 3 car ones being more common than you'll find in the GTA. It's also more likely you'll find bungalows which command a higher premium due to the amount of physical land they take up.
It's hard not to think you've made it when you're living in a 2k+ sq. ft bungalow with a 3 car garage, pool and a view of the ocean or a canyon.
Sounds like you've read a bit of Strong Towns. Why do you see that as inconsistent with their message?
I had them pegged as an anti-debt pro-accrual-accounting lobby. It seems reasonable to me that the places they decry are great places to live - if the argument is against neighbourhoods where more money was spent on them than was justified then those neighbourhoods would be in high demand.
The gist is: the rescue plan includes some pork, but throws a lot of money at problems that are tractable by throwing money at them.
He also shows that our roads and bridges aren’t that bad: and luckily more money is going into electric vehicles ($147B vs $115B).
Yeah, a lot of this money will end up in the hands of entrenched players and there’s no transit/road use reforms, but there’s some good stuff in there beyond the evocative “roads and bridges” soundbyte.
I can't find any infrastructure in the plan. It looks like we will spend trillions and have absolutely nothing to show for it when it's over.
You didn’t look too hard. The plan includes all of:
(Transport infrastructure) Highways, bridges, airports,
(water infrastructure) water service line
(communications infrastructure) fiber
(electrical infrastructure) transmission lines
(health care infrastructure) hospital modernization
(educational infrastructure) school facility modernization
China has constructed 16,000 miles of fully connected high speed rail, and the Democrats are paying off political friends with "[interest group] infrastructure".
China looks like a better bet for the future.
And you forgot to include the real pork (list not exhaustive):
* $10 billion establishing a Civilian Climate Corps
* $100 billion on public schools
* $12 billion on community colleges
* $25 billion on child care
* $400 billion on care for the aging and people with disabilities
* $15 billion eliminating racial and gender inequities
* $40 billion on job training
* $48 billion on workforce development and worker protectionYou consider that pork spending? Education is one area that pretty much everyone agrees that the government should be spending money on.
China owns the future with respect to infrastructure. The high speed rail system they created is absolutely amazing, I had the personal privilege to ride the Shanghai to Beijing route speeding in luxury at 300mph. In 10 years, the same time span the United States created 30 miles of High speed rail, they created 16,000 miles.
The Biden plan is a huge loser, and solidifies the United States role as a corrupt country with a depleted infrastructure - arguing about political language rather than building anything at all.
No, its an infrastructure bill. Infrastructure is more than transportation.
We aren't getting anything for this debt. But some special interests will get personally rich.
If you haven't noticed, our entire system isn't working. We have massive inequality, race riots, and if you read any polls no one trusts any institution.
I do not believe we will get anything for that money. I'm completely skeptical of our failing system; all of the money will line the pockets of politically connected groups. If anything gets build at all I would be amazed.
Also the plan lacks vision. If you have all the cards, why not go big? It just looks stingy. No high speed rail for you.
Jon Oliver talked about debt last week (1) and how infrastructure is paid for. But if I've learned anything in my life, it's that our government is mostly show, and most of these decisions are made behind closed doors, everything else is just posturing for their base.
From the article:
> We need to be obsessive about this, particularly at the local level, because we need to improve our quality of life. Many things that are in the American Jobs Plan are not infrastructure, but rather consumption. Still, they are worthy of our spending. If we want the resources to do them, not just in a one-time blowout but in an ongoing manner, then we need a real financial return on our infrastructure investments.
> If we want to spend $10 billion establishing a Civilian Climate Corps, we have to make our investments in infrastructure financially productive.
> If we want to spend $100 billion on public schools and $12 billion on community colleges, we need our infrastructure investments to have a positive return on investment.
> If we want to spend $25 billion on child care, $400 billion on care for the aging and people with disabilities, and expand long-term care under Medicaid, we can’t make infrastructure investments that make our cities poorer.
> If we want to spend $15 billion eliminating racial and gender inequities, $40 billion on job training, and $48 billion on workforce development and worker protection, then we can’t allow our federal infrastructure investments to continue to induce, everywhere across this continent, the American version of the Chinese Ghost City.
This is politics as usual and no one seems to care about fiscal restraint anymore, so who cares anyway.
If Congress were 4,350 or even 43,500 members strong, I suspect that we'd see a large reduction in wasteful spending / bribes because individual Congresspeople would wield less than 10th or 100th of the power they do now. People wouldn't be adding a billion here or a billion there to get that one more vote they need to get the bill passed.
There are arguments that humans will mismanage anything past a certain point of comprehension, I think 1.2 trillion dollars definitely falls into that category, I don't care how smart you are.
Regardless I agree that a big issue is not enough heads are making these decisions.
And had it been ratified, we would have around 6,000 representatives in the house today!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Am...
Care to join my movement?
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-populat...
I don't have the skills to do that, much less by tomorrow, but I'm wondering how set in stone the list of actual bridges to work on is.
Except its not.
> What you are seeing here is NET public investment. For those of you who don’t routinely deal with budgets and finance, a “net” number is always the difference of two other numbers. For example, net revenue (also commonly called “profit”) is the difference between gross revenue and expenses. Net public investment is the difference between gross public investment and depreciation.
True, so far.
> I’m going to simplify this way down, to the point where I might be accused of oversimplification. In my defense, I am not going to oversimplify this nearly as much as the American Jobs Plan has, and I’m going to do it in a way to help you understand what is really going on, not obscure reality with a clever truth (or half-truth, if you prefer).
Except that is exactly what the author does.
> There are two ways for this number to fall. The first is if we are spending less on infrastructure than in prior years. [...] The other way for the net number to fall is for depreciation to rise.
True. Those are both possible
But having said that the White House plan use of net infrastructure spending as a share of GDP creates a misleading picture of a peak on the 1960s falling subsequently, and pointing out how net numbers can go down because the negative side goes up instead of the positive side going down, the author provides a bunch of metaphors and analogies and other distractions but, critically doesn’t say what gross investment actually looks like, hoping you’ll just accept his mention of how it could be different because of rising depreciation masking the real trend in investment as the truth of what’s happening, since he said the plan description is misleading.
As it turns out gross infrastructure spending...peaked in the late-1960s at around 3% of GDP and has fallen since to under 2%. [0]
While the drop is slightly less pronounced than in the net spending chart from the White House plan, its clearly not a case of rising depreciation creating a false impression of falling spending.
[0] https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/its-time-...
> 1. cover the costs of the infrastructure investment,
> 2. pay for the ongoing operations and maintenance of that infrastructure,
> 3. create enough wealth to ultimately pay for the rehabilitation and replacement of that infrastructure, and
> 4. provide a return so that our communities can increase their consumption (i.e., improve their quality of life).
#3 is a duplicate of #1, and #4 is certain if #1 and #2 are achieved. So really just #1 and #2 matter, and I do agree with those two—but how do you measure the ROI? Are we any good at estimating infrastructure construction, maintenance, and deprecation costs, or measuring (and taxing) economic impact of said infrastructure? My impression is no, because if we were there'd be tons of companies out there building toll roads and railways instead of the government having to will infrastructure into being.
If the author's so concerned with Chinese ascendancy, maybe look at how to get the 1.1 billion extra people the United States would need to compete. (Hint: immigration.) Unless they think there's some magic sweet spot beyond which each additional worker is more liability than asset to the economy?
From the site, it's clear what Strong Towns is against ("wasteful" infrastructure), but less so what they're for (Self-sufficient-at-zero-growth infra? Agile Manifesto approach to infra?).
Speaking of manifestos, I'll leave you with this: "[Capitalism] has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life." -Marx
Anyway, it Seems like the current proposal is a Obama 'shovel ready' infra plan 2.0, it didn't accomplish anything meaningful and lasting to the country. This looks the same.
I would have loved to have seen some true high-speed rail proposition, yet it doesn't contain anything like that. Biden is not looking for some true meaningful change, just more of the same stuff.
note: if you want to revitalize small towns centers/cores, trains are the best options. If you travel in europe, especially in Germany, in almost every medium town at its core/center there is a train station. It creates an ecosystem around it. Roads to lead to more sprawl and the typical strip-mall architecture.
Part II - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/4/12/the-half-truth...
Part III - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/4/13/when-it-comes-...
I agree rail would be great but the problem is that auto-centric attitude is deeply entrenched in the culture. Any rail proposal will just have a huge list of various groups, organizations and citizens opposing it and thus driving up costs and ultimately killing any plans.
Initiatives like 100% rural broadband are less about making the most efficient use of resources, and more about attempting to bring some money and jobs back to bumfuck America.
The author makes the mistake of framing the Jobs Plan as inefficient in the goals it was designed for. It's not. Everybody knows investing in podunk towns that peaked half a century ago is a "waste of money". The Jobs plan contains these measures in an attempt to reduce the vast inequality between these places and wealthy "hub" cities that produce an ever increasing majority of US GDP.
Will it work? I have no idea
I voted for Biden and lean independent, so this isn't political. But this infrastructure bill is largely a jobs and pork program and isn't meaningful change. We don't need more new highways.
"In the 2010 stimulus package, my community received millions for a new road. Guess what? That gave us some short-term construction jobs, but now my community has a new overengineered, overbuilt road to maintain. Forever. This is what infrastructure is: a forever obligation."
Yep. And ya know what? Building trains isn't going to solve the problem either. Why build a train when you go from one city to another and you just have to rent a car when you get there anyway? Trains work when you have desirable places to go once you step off the train. Maybe if we're lucky those places will spring up around the train station(s).
And even if you largely disagree with the article, at least appreciate that someone is challenging the status quo in an honest, if not ideological way, who wants to make America a better, more sustainable place. I feel frustrated on a routine basis that nobody ever questions every family having all these cars, maintaining them, paying insurance, and building and maintaining new roads and highways versus like, just building differently instead of the suburbs and strip malls.
I do live in the suburbs, and it's not all bad. It's easy to get in my car and drive a mile down the road and get a coffee from McDonald's, what's not to love? And my Amazon Prime packages from some warehouse never get stolen. Hell, most days I don't need to leave near my house or talk to anybody, I can just interact with them on social media instead. (-edit- /s)
Ok, I do admit there are some nice things. Having a yard (aside from the constant mowing noises, weed killer, etc.) has some nice benefits. We did condense down to one car at least since we don't have kids.
Where do you live? There are parts of the country where trains are a must for everyday commuters, and intercity commuters. NYC, Boston, DC, etc...
Do you realize that the north-east corridor is already profitable, and it is used a lot. (NYC, D.C. and Boston part). Its profits go to subsidize other routes.
That corridor needs a high-speed portion, but there has always been political oppositions to it, and this bill doesn't do much, or hasn't specified anything.
Seems like a Obama 'shovel ready' infra plan 2.0, it didn't accomplish anything meaningful and lasting to the country. This looks the same.
And yea the east coast is different. Is the west coast? Idk. For most of the rest of America it's unfortunately not feasible in the current state of things. There are exceptions of course.
Even if they need to rent a car at the other end that's still a huge net benefit to reducing the load on the route as it exists now, as well as increasing the overall system efficiency.
And putting trains on tracks is easy. You aren't building trains you're building train track routes that can be used by many trains.
[U.S.] Suburbs become unpalatable once you live somewhere that actually cares about public transit and designed the city accordingly. E.g. Seoul. With mixed residential and commercial businesses, one never has to walk more than 5 minutes to get groceries, if that. Trains and busses will take you anywhere you want. Of course, you can still have a car, but it simply is obviated unless you have a specific need to move furniture, etc.
After having experienced that, I absolutely detest having to hop in my car to drive and get groceries, etc, because there is -nothing- but houses in my suburb area. It makes me rather depressed knowing what people are missing out on, what life is capable of being like. A well-run, comprehensive train and bus system like that will probably never happen in the US.
edit: I am speaking specifically about suburbs in the US. I don't think other countries design suburbs nearly as car-centric and isolated as the U.S. does.
I live in a suburb in the UK. We have groceries in walking distance. I can get a train or a bus anywhere I want. This is all achievable without building a metropolis like Seoul.
I don't understand why people hear suburb and think unwalkable and no public transport. It's normal in other places.
If you're not familiar with U.S. suburbs, their history, and how they were explicitly designed... that's fine, but it's kind of condescending to talk like those of us who are aware of U.S. suburbs have some "curious" and bizarre idea about them.
It can be done in America. I've seen small, walkable towns there. In fact isn't America famous for its walkable small towns? Small-town America. You can even find them near where people think they're impossible - like the small coastal towns in the Bay Area such as Half Moon Bay. Completely walkable.
And to repeat the parent comment back to them:
> It makes me rather depressed knowing what people are missing out on, what life is capable of being like.
You can say the same about their own view of suburbs!
I live now in a proper suburb and drive everywhere. And I enjoy it much more.
Not everyone values same things in their life the same. YMMV.
Completely agree. And it's a public policy problem where one lifestyle is very nearly enforced. So people are pushing back against that.
It's like if the government was doing this thing you wanted them to do and a lot of other people didn't like it, but they did it anyway, you'd be like yea cool this works. Good job government.
In this case it's keep building roads, parking lots, and suburbs because I like driving and I'll use that to solve all my problems. But you're not realizing some of the costs of all of those things. Society certainly is. National debt, time spent sitting in a car commuting because there's no other option, teenagers dying in car crashes (I think it's still the number 1 killer of teens?), drunk driving (again no options here), amount of money spent on infrastructure, oil, wars, etc.
The only option for the majority of the US is to have a car. And I hate that.
edit: also regarding cars: I can't relax fully because I'm operating a vehicle in a space shared by other people, who are potentially distracted, operating potentially deadly vehicles that kill or seriously injure many Americans each year, and I can't read a book, etc, because my hands are tied up. This would be fine if I had other choices, but I realistically don't.
A few years ago she moved to the US and we now live in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, where she loves it. She prefers it over Hong Kong in nearly every way, loves driving, loves everything about it.
It's simple not true that US suburbs become unpalatable when compared to Seoul (or Hong Kong). That may be true for you, but it is not at all true for everyone. There are tradeoffs and compromises on both extremes.
Specifically, the most important TLDR is that we are not actually suffering from an infrastructure crisis because we spend less on infrastructure than we did in the past, but because we have so much to maintain that even a historic massive capital program like the American Jobs plan is nowhere near enough to fix the maintenance backlog. The money for maintenance should be coming from local revenue that the infrastructure is generating, but most of our infrastructure is in rural and sparse suburban areas and generating little to no return on the investment, so local governments can't afford to maintain it all.
If we want to truly fix American infrastructure, we should be looking to triage our maintenance backlog, let go of old infrastructure that doesn't generate a positive return, and consolidate our investments around projects that generate more in tax revenue (over time) than the amortized capital cost of the infrastructure AND its ongoing lifetime maintenance.
Nothing to see here: move along.
1) it is primarily about pumping out some working-class jobs, quickly, before we have too many angry young men turning to criminal activity in the cities, driving even more people (and businesses) out of the cities, in a downward spiral. This isn't "investment", it's more like a blood transfusion.
2) if our system were more democratic than it currently is, the infrastructure would not be less auto-centric, it would be far more automobile-centric. If it were put up to a vote, there would be >2/3 in favor of automobile as the only infrastructure getting worked on. Not saying that would be wise, just that it's not the undemocratic aspects of America's system that cause it to be auto-centric, it's the democratic aspects.