Tag: Infrastructure

How To Build a National High Speed Rail system

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

… A Four Step Program

Step 1. Give states a framework to develop plans, either individually or in groups, and present them to the Federal government for vetting, approval, and funding support.

Step 2. States do that.

Step 3. Fund a substantial number of seed corridors, so that a large number of metro areas (House) and States (Senate) have a stake in maintaining ongoing Federal HSR funding.

Step 4. Keep funding the construction of more.

That is my plan. But, OTOH, I’m just an obscure Development Economist with a field specialization in Regional Economics, so the fact that its my plan is neither here nor there.

More newsworthy, it seems to be the plan of the Obama administration. So, unlike the Bank Bail-out, I find myself on the “cheerleader” side of Administration activity.

Give Me an H! Give Me an S! Give Me an R! What’s It Spell? One Piece of the Energy Independent Transport Puzzle! YEAH!!!!

An HSR Station Grows at Transbay (SF) (pt 2)

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

This is “part 2” of A Train Station Grows at Transbay … Hopefully not a Bonsai (pt. 1)

In Part 1, an effort was made to try to fit 8 High Speed Rail (HSR) trains per hour (tph), plus up to 8 Caltrain tph, into the proposed “train box” design for the Transbay terminal, which has 3 island platforms with a total of 6 platform tracks.

And the result is an ugly kludge that quite possibly cannot physically fit, and certainly would put a cramp on the operations of Caltrain. Since the 1999 San Francisco Proposition H made it a local ordnance for the Transbay Terminal to serve both High Speed Rail and Caltrain services, a design which is incapable of genuinely serving both certainly violates the spirit, if not the letter, of San Francisco law.

Transport Stimulus: Doing It Right

Adapted from an entry at Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence … links to crossposts may be found there.

OK, so, to make an egregiously long story merely excessively long, a very strange thing happened on the road to the Stimulus Package. As Rep. Oberstar told the U.S. Conference of Mayors:

That is why we set forth this $85-billion initiative from our committee. It’s been reduced in the final going. We expect that it’ll come out somewhere around $63 billion, but $30 billion for highways.

The reason for the reduction in overall funding … was the tax cut initiative that had to be paid for in some way by keeping the entire package in the range of $850 billion.

As I described in Transport Stimulus: You’re Doing It Wrong, actual effective stimulus spending was shortchanged — and in particular spending with substantial long term economic and strategic benefits — to “pay for” tax cuts.

In reality, if we want to be able to “afford” tax cuts, what we need first and foremost is growth, and economic growth requires effective government investment in the infrastructure of a New Energy Economy.

“Spreading The Wealth”!! That’s How This Country Grew!!!!

I was born in ’48 and grew up in the time after WWII and the rapid growth of not only a Great Economic Expansion but the Envy of the World to the American Worker and our Products and Services. We had the power and wealth hungry who tried to suppress but we also had intelligent business minds and workers willing to fight that brought about growing wages, safety in the work place, respect for the worker, and so much more, which gave respect and expansion to not only the employer but the companies, The company owners, the executives, the worker, and for those public companies shareholders were all reaping the rewards of that wealth sharing, that’s what built the strong and ever expanding middle class and helped some break out of that and join the upper crust of the wealthy. It was the Only Successful way a true capitalist society that can achieve and expand further. Decent expanding wages for a workers hard work and company dedication gives them the ability to purchase goods and services which in turn gives growth and prosperity to other companies and workers.

Load more