Road Builders advocate increase in gas tax
Road, transportation builder: America stays in the slow lane
'“The presidential campaigns are not focused on this, but we need to change the conversation. The other countries are not waiting for us. They’re surpassing us,� Ruane said, noting China plans to build 53,000 miles of new highway in the first two decades of this century compared to just 1,130 new interstate miles here.'
Comparing China to the US in terms of road construction is clearly a strawman argument, the US already built a huge network, ours is mature, the B/C ratio for new links in the US is much lower than China. China has yet to build out its network.
The strategy for maturity is not more of the same.
Comments
Permit me to put a match to David's "strawman" theory.
You're missing Ruane's point. He's talking about global economic competitiveness.
China (and India and the EU) are not building transportation infrastructure just because we have it. They are investing in it -- rapidly -- as part of national strategic plans to build their economies to better compete with us.
The problem is that China and India have been experiencing double-digit economic growth with less than optimal transportation networks and are now nipping at our heels in the the quest for supremacy in the global marketplace.
The question we should be asking is "What happens when these countries have a modern, multi-modal transportation network that dramatically increases their national productity, lowers their shipping costs and opens up the world's largest populations to new jobs and products?"
I think many economists would say they will "eat our lunch"!
We in the U.S. can either compete, by further expanding and upgrading our "mature" (some might say deteriorating) multi-modal transportation network to make it more efficient, or we can sit in ever-increasing multi-modal traffic gridlock and watch the American quality of life deteriorate.
The "strategy for maturity" certainly is not more of the same. More of the same... complacency and failure to even make the capital investments necessary to keep what we already have in good shape... won't accommodate a U.S. population expected to grow by another 100 million in 30 years, or facilitate the doubling of truck shipments projected to be necessary by 2035 just to keep the American economy growing a modest 2-3 percent annually.
The America I want my children and grandchildren to live in needs better intermodal connections, operational efficiencies brought through the application of new ideas and technologies and... yes... construction of new transportation infrastructure capacity... in our ports, inland waterways, rail network, transit systems, airports and highways.
It's not free and it's time to get on with it!
Posted by: Bill Toohey | June 9, 2008 2:33 PM