infrastructure

From GlobeSt: "The Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Monday awarded a $192.8-million contract for reconstruction on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge connecting the Bronx to Queens and Long Island. The contractor--Conti of New York, LLC--is scheduled to start work on the four-year, three-stage project by year’s end, according to a release from MTA Bridges and Tunnels."

Here's Port Authority executive director Chris Ward in the Wall Street Journal this morning, in a larger story about future construction funds, including for public works, from the Obama administration: "What we've been told is to be ready, it's coming."

The story alluded to possible Obama funding for the ARC rail tunnel under the Hudson River.

City and state officials are positioning themselves to garner funding from any new federal stimulus package for various transportation and infrastructure projects. Most of the projects are smaller-scale and nearly ready to start development.

It’s hoped, officials say, that new federal funds from the stimulus will push the projects forward.

“Infrastructure is huge for us,” said a state official, who said that in addition to infrastructure funding, the state is seeking help from Washington on unemployment insurance and food stamps, among other issues. “Anything that will put people back to work and get the economy flowing again in short order.  read more »

We're a few weeks late to the game on this, but last month New Jersey Transit launched a new Web site and accompanying promotional video to hype its proposed multibillion-dollar set of rail tunnels under the Hudson River, known as the Access to the Region's Core project.

With ominous music playing in the background, a deep-voiced narrator warns, "Our mobility is at risk. Today's transportation system is at the breaking point."

Worth a quick look, the video spells out some of the regional transportation problems that exist today, and offers ARC as the solution. The tunnel would connect more trains from New Jersey into a new set of tracks and platforms just north of Penn Station.  read more »

At the end of June, when parts of Iowa were underwater, I wrote that the United States needed to develop a rainy day fund and do more to routinize emergency response and reconstruction. In that piece I mentioned that, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration: "The U.S. has sustained 78 weather-related disasters over the past 28 years in which overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The total normalized losses for the 78 events exceed $600 billion."              

Now, we are all horrified by the impact of Hurricane Ike on the Gulf Coast and on Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city. The financial impact of this latest disaster is still being calculated, and even though the impact was not as great as it could have been or as devastating as some predicted, the financial cost will be huge.  read more »

Barack Obama in his acceptance speech last night mentioned infrastructure, sort of:

Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves – protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology. [emphasis ours]

More here on infrastructure as a hidden campaign issue by The Observer's Eliot Brown, who was in Denver and is now on his way to St. Paul, site of the bridge collapse last August that killed several people.

DENVER—Discussion of infrastructure in national presidential campaigns is usually extremely limited, as the decidedly un-sexy topics like highway funding and new tunnels tend not to energize the public as does, say, a war or a controversial social issue.

Things haven't been much different this election, at least not yet, but there are at least a few reasons to think under-funded infrastructure might enter the debate in a more pronounced role, at least if one listens to some of the infrastructure geeks we heard at a roundtable on the topic on Monday, hosted by the Rocky Mountain Institute.

The funding needs nationwide for highways, roads, rails, ports, etc.  read more »

From commentary by Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association:

The European Union and Japan, Korea and China are all now planning at the mega-region scale, moving aggressively to build high speed rail networks and other large scale infrastructure systems that will enhance their global competitive position. As a nation and as a region, we should take heed of the aggressive economic development, infrastructure, education and quality-of- life investments being made in the Pearl River Delta and China as a whole. Our ability to compete globally will hinge on our willingness to make similar investments here.

Full commentary here at the Center for an Urban Future (PDF).

Mayor Bloomberg during his weekly radio show this morning talked about what he told a U.S. Senate committee on Thursday regarding the recent federal stimulus package. Mr. Bloomberg was testifying with the mayors of Jacksonville, Fla., Atlanta, and Kansas City, Mo., about the need for federal funds for infrastructure improvements.

I understand why we need them, but I thought the last stimulus package was, not a total waste of money, but a very inefficient way to get the economy moving. I likened it to giving a drink to an alcoholic. The problem we have in this country is we spend money we don’t have and we spend it on the wrong things.

What we should be doing is what Roosevelt did back in the New Deal, where we created jobs but we used the work to build the infrastructure we needed for the next few years.

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