Infrastructure

[TahoeHorn 107]

What type of projects should, and should not, be in an infrastructure bill?

I'd ask two questions:

1. What kind of "profit" will it have?

2.  How many jobs will it produce?/What will it do to raise GDP?

Projects that score high  (and high enough to meet my spec) will almost all be projects that employ a fairly unique highly paid team, and provide a quasi-monopoly service.  If private industry could do it and doesn't it's unlikely to meet my spec.  If the government could charge for it and not make huge profits it probably wouldn't pass either.

Hoover Dam, I-10 and Houston Intercontinental Airport meet my test.  A bunch of levees for New Orleans don't.  JerryWorld doesn't.  The Houston Convention Center doesn't.  A new tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan would.  A high speed rail from nowhere California top nowhere California would not.  The first wind tunnel did.

 

 

[F250 28674]

Just give the money to Musk so we can get the hyperloop all the way down I-35 in Texas.

[Royalfan5 2348]

Well I'll disagree without about levees for New Orleans, as the port remains very useful, and a lot of out commodity exports flow out through the gulf, especially with the new Panamax vessels.

[TahoeHorn 107]

1 minute ago, Royalfan5 said:

Well I'll disagree without about levees for New Orleans, as the port remains very useful, and a lot of out commodity exports flow out through the gulf, especially with the new Panamax vessels.

They could have just rerouted the Mississippi for a fraction of the cost.   But then Morgan City (or wherever) would be the port.

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

A truss system strong enough to hold up Trump's expanding ass.

[thrillhammer 683]

unemployment isnt the problem it once was.  I'd like to see us limit this infrastructure spending.  we are deeper in debt than ever. a spending program is not wise.  

[TahoeHorn 107]

1 minute ago, thrillhammer said:

unemployment isnt the problem it once was.  I'd like to see us limit this infrastructure spending.  we are deeper in debt than ever. a spending program is not wise.  

I can find projects that will make money for the government.

[Royalfan5 2348]

7 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

They could have just rerouted the Mississippi for a fraction of the cost.   But then Morgan City (or wherever) would be the port.

Your going to have to move all the soy crushers and grain terminals then too, along with the rail heads.

[swraith 336]

Infrastructure may be needed in terms of maintaining and replacing existing infrastructure. How does one measure profit for infrastructure upgrades of existing projects?

 

i don’t think we need any infrastructure job  programs based on current unemployment levels. 

[FondrenRoad 4378]

8 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

They could have just rerouted the Mississippi for a fraction of the cost.   But then Morgan City (or wherever) would be the port.

Plus, oil is already going through the LOOP.  You could move most of NOLA's other traffic to Houston and build a new large port in Biloxi where you wouldn't have to levee the river through miles and miles of wetlands to access the gulf.  Also if you let the river go free, it will still remain navigable for fairly large vessels.  You can build larger port facilities at Vicksburg where you have direct access to I-20 and easy access to I-55.  You also get the bonus of breathing some life into towns like Vicksburg and Natchez that have been dying for decades.  Create a new purpose built rail line from Vicksburg to Biloxi. All that is cheaper than keeping most of NOLA above water.  And you save the South Louisiana wetlands in the process.

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

3 minutes ago, swraith said:

Infrastructure may be needed in terms of maintaining and replacing existing infrastructure. How does one measure profit for infrastructure upgrades of existing projects?

 

i don’t think we need any infrastructure job  programs based on current unemployment levels. 

Correct. Fix broken bridges/roads. No fucking boondoggle bridges to nowhere.

[wildcat09 29213]

Isn't one of the key elements of infrastructure that the market doesn't really provide for it on its own? If an entity can bear the cost of its construction, charge for its use, and derive a "huge" profit, based solely on private demand, it probably isn't infrastructure. 

[yaqdum 182]

50 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

What will it do to raise GDP?

i really hate my first post here to be a correction, but you type a D instead of an O, dopehorn.

[yaqdum 182]

oh, yah.  infrastructure.

we could use a new dirt road from austin to houston.

[Blotto 23424]

I honestly have no idea what OP is babbling about.

Please define "profit" for the government. Is this different from increased tax revenue from a higher GDP?

What's the point of considering whether private industry could do it. Private industry and the federal government have different missions.

I assume Tahoe has a point he is trying to make, but I have no idea what it is. 

[SKJ 1305]

13 hours ago, TahoeHorn said:

I can find projects that will make money for the government.

You're really trying way too hard to be smart and connected. 

Edited March 27, 2018 by SKJ

[The People’s Elbow 707]

15 hours ago, TahoeHorn said:

What type of projects should, and should not, be in an infrastructure bill?

I'd ask two questions:

1. What kind of "profit" will it have?

2.  How many jobs will it produce?/What will it do to raise GDP?

Projects that score high  (and high enough to meet my spec) will almost all be projects that employ a fairly unique highly paid team, and provide a quasi-monopoly service.  If private industry could do it and doesn't it's unlikely to meet my spec.  If the government could charge for it and not make huge profits it probably wouldn't pass either.

Hoover Dam, I-10 and Houston Intercontinental Airport meet my test.  A bunch of levees for New Orleans don't.  JerryWorld doesn't.  The Houston Convention Center doesn't.  A new tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan would.  A high speed rail from nowhere California top nowhere California would not.  The first wind tunnel did.

 

 

Would improved rail service and ROW in the northeast corridor between DC and Boston meet your spec? What about I-35 improvements in Austin? 

[TahoeHorn 107]

7 hours ago, The People’s Elbow said:

Would improved rail service and ROW in the northeast corridor between DC and Boston meet your spec? What about I-35 improvements in Austin? 

I don't know.  I'd have to guess.

Passenger rail doesn't seem to work.  Freeways in rapidly growing areas are some of the very best bets.

[Bateshorn 9897]

Let's establish a couple of things: 

1) No state is going to agree to any fed demands unless the feds put up at least 50% of the money. 

2) Different states have different needs.  Road and Bridge repair in northern states is a huge money suck, much more than the south.  The mid atlantic and NE states want lots of rail and public transit money. Some states want to dump it into ports and commercial rail, etc.

Defining Profit is almost impossible to do.  Do you mean in corporate terms?  Like does the state or municipality rainy day fund grow due to a surplus of transit or toll fees?  Or do you define it as attracting a major employer because your infrastructure can handle their growing business model and provides safe, easy, and efficient transport for their employees?

[FondrenRoad 4378]

2 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

I don't know.  I'd have to guess.

Passenger rail doesn't seem to work.  Freeways in rapidly growing areas are some of the very best bets.

Passenger rail works very well in the NE corridor. Its fully occupied even on the current crumbling infrastructure. In fact, if you take that region by itself, Amtrak is profitable on ticket sales alone. It loses money running trains elsewhere.  The best fix is to shut down Amtrak everywhere else.  Then Amtrak could cover its own infrastructure upgrades in the NE corridor. More freeways won't work in the NE corridor. There are very few greenfields.  It is mature, already densely populated, and densifying even more.  Nobody wants to drive into fucking Manhattan, or even downtown Boston, Philly, or DC. And none of those places want to tear down every other building to put up parking lots so they can look as ugly as Birmingham or Houston.

[yaqdum 182]

3 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

Nobody wants to drive into fucking Manhattan, or even downtown Boston

i can vouch for these two.  manhattan, though, if you hit the city about dawn on sunday morning belongs to you and a bunch of taxicabs.  you can go anywhere you want and see the things you've always heard of.  nice thing about doing that instead of the subway thing is that you understand where things are with respect to each other.  subway is a bunch of bubbles.  the bubbles could be anywhere.

maybe ten in the morning you need to get the hell out of there, but before it starts getting bad it is a very cool experience.

[Bateshorn 9897]

2 hours ago, FondrenRoad said:

Passenger rail works very well in the NE corridor. Its fully occupied even on the current crumbling infrastructure. In fact, if you take that region by itself, Amtrak is profitable on ticket sales alone. It loses money running trains elsewhere.  The best fix is to shut down Amtrak everywhere else.  Then Amtrak could cover its own infrastructure upgrades in the NE corridor. More freeways won't work in the NE corridor. There are very few greenfields.  It is mature, already densely populated, and densifying even more.  Nobody wants to drive into fucking Manhattan, or even downtown Boston, Philly, or DC. And none of those places want to tear down every other building to put up parking lots so they can look as ugly as Birmingham or Houston.

So much fucking this.  Everyone who lives on the upper eastern seaboard LOVES the NE Regional, despite all of it's flaws.  A week doesn't go by that I don't run into somebody fresh back from NYC or Boston raving about taking the train.  The problem is we also have a fucking train from DC to New Orleans.  That's just stupid.

[FondrenRoad 4378]

3 hours ago, yaqdum said:

i can vouch for these two.  manhattan, though, if you hit the city about dawn on sunday morning belongs to you and a bunch of taxicabs.  you can go anywhere you want and see the things you've always heard of.  nice thing about doing that instead of the subway thing is that you understand where things are with respect to each other.  subway is a bunch of bubbles.  the bubbles could be anywhere.

maybe ten in the morning you need to get the hell out of there, but before it starts getting bad it is a very cool experience.

I'm a big fan of the leisurely drive, and I agree.  Approaching Manhattan over the 59th street bridge when traffic is at a lowpoint is a much prettier experience than entering it through a subway tunnel.  But we don't build infrastructure for that.  We build it for peak times.  Its nice when they bring out the old subway cars for the holidays too, but they aren't suitable rolling stock for day to day commuting.

 

[FondrenRoad 4378]

1 hour ago, Bateshorn said:

So much fucking this.  Everyone who lives on the upper eastern seaboard LOVES the NE Regional, despite all of it's flaws.  A week doesn't go by that I don't run into somebody fresh back from NYC or Boston raving about taking the train.  The problem is we also have a fucking train from DC to New Orleans.  That's just stupid.

Even without running a train, upkeep on stations nobody uses wastes a ton of money.  Using your example of the Crescent, take a look at Slidell and Picayune stations.  Picayune's is brand new and gets less than 10 people a day riding the one train that serves it.  Both of them are much nicer and have more amenities than the average LIRR station which sees 1000s of commuters each day.

Now nobody gives a fuck about going from Slidell to NYC on a train, yet we make that possible for some reason.  People may commute via train to New Orleans if you made those stations part of a commuter line and added a couple infill stations.  A regional transit authority could certainly lose less money on that stretch than Amtrak currently loses.

[Lurch 5921]

How about nationalized nuclear energy plants?

[swraith 336]

Natural gas has already given us very low energy costs in the US, to the point that nuclear plants are not commercially competitive at the moment.

[bad_teammate 13132]

5 hours ago, Lurch said:

How about nationalized nuclear energy plants?

Hell yes. More nukes please.

[SmokeyBear1861 107]

Fuck profits, build the damn high speed rail from Dallas to Galveston to Austin.

[SmokeyBear1861 107]

5 hours ago, Lurch said:

How about nationalized nuclear energy plants?

Yes please. Just stay off the coast.

Whrn taking thermodynamics at Texas, the genius professor laughed off wind and solar. They don't provide in peak times, and storing the energy is an unclean and inefficient bitch. He said nuclear is the cleanest and most efficient by far.

[softlynow 1783]

The American Society of Civil Engineers’ Report Card currently has us at a D+. Build/repair what we need to get to at least a B-.

[Anastasis 23390]

14 minutes ago, softlynow said:

The American Society of Civil Engineers’ Report Card currently has us at a D+. Build/repair what we need to get to at least a B-.

Kinda like quoting PhRMA on the state of drug development for orphan diseases. 

I mean, I agree that we got some shit that needs to be addressed, but its probably not as bad as sky is falling reports from trade industry folks would suggest. 

Edited March 28, 2018 by Anastasis

[SmokeyBear1861 107]

Funny how they gave their highest grade to rail and it's had quite a few fatal derailing incidents. It's going to take a massive fucking effort to get it anywhere close to a B. I think it should be setup like a competition between the states. I guarantee you if Texas got its share of funds to get our infrastructure act together we would be doing great.

https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/state-item/texas/

Doing kind of shitty right now

 

[swraith 336]

Selfishly, I wish the state of Texas would invest in water infrastructure projects. Namely additional reservoirs along with desalination plants along the coast that pipe that water inland. It isn’t economic to build but Texas is going to need incremental fresh water supplies in the decades to come.  

[SmokeyBear1861 107]

7 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Kinda like quoting PhRMA on the state of drug development for orphan diseases. 

I mean, I agree that we got some shit that needs to be addressed, but its probably not as bad as sky is falling reports from trade industry folks would suggest. 

I agree, but at the same time they do have solid data and analysis behind their work. Us engineers tend to do that, if you want to provide facts and claims to refute their positions that would be helpful.

I think their reccomendations are actually reasonable and will cost much less than emergency measures and peoples lives. Technology has pushed our efficiency in labor through the roof, the problem is the current fractional reserve lending and never ending wars/corruption that keeps the money from flowing back into our society. 

[yaqdum 182]

6 hours ago, FondrenRoad said:

I'm a big fan of the leisurely drive, and I agree.  Approaching Manhattan over the 59th street bridge when traffic is at a lowpoint is a much prettier experience than entering it through a subway tunnel.  But we don't build infrastructure for that.  We build it for peak times.  Its nice when they bring out the old subway cars for the holidays too, but they aren't suitable rolling stock for day to day commuting.

 

just noticed this.

you cheapskate.  i know why you take the 59th street bridge.  same for me.  as you say, though, it is a very nice view into the city.  i used to occasionally take a coworker for his or her cherry trip into the city, and that view always took the breath away.  not like midspan the walk over the brooklyn bridge, but mighty impressive.  you're looking at one hell of a lot of bricks.

before sunup one sunday i picked up a friend i'd worked with in nashville a couple times and took him for his first visit.  on the way we stopped by the calvary cemetery near bqe at lie.  got there before sunup just as they were opening the gates.  we drove around the cemetery by headlight and descended down into the hollow where the cemetery scene of the godfather was shot.  that's always an impressive place, but by headlights it was very special.

[yaqdum 182]

kindly put me on ignore, jbj.

[Lurch 5921]

At some point we’ll need to invest in rising tide mitigation.

[yoladu 4066]

infrastructure? didn't we just borrow 1.5 billion dollars for tax cuts?

[Lurch 5921]

Unlike the tax cuts, infrastructure investments would actually create revenue (or prevent its erosion)

[Stunns38 3357]

11 hours ago, yaqdum said:

i can vouch for these two.  manhattan, though, if you hit the city about dawn on sunday morning belongs to you and a bunch of taxicabs.  you can go anywhere you want and see the things you've always heard of.  nice thing about doing that instead of the subway thing is that you understand where things are with respect to each other.  subway is a bunch of bubbles.  the bubbles could be anywhere.

maybe ten in the morning you need to get the hell out of there, but before it starts getting bad it is a very cool experience.

Or almost hit Al Roker on an empty 57th street who was biking to NBC at 5am on a Monday morning, True story.

[FondrenRoad 4378]

2 minutes ago, Stunns38 said:

Or almost hit Al Roker on an empty 57th street who was biking to NBC at 5am on a Monday morning, True story.

Old fat Al Roker or new skinny Al Roker?

[atomheartbevo 89396]

20 hours ago, The People’s Elbow said:

 What about I-35 improvements in Austin? 

Maybe they can improve I-35 in Austin after they finish working on I-35 between Waco and Dallas.

[swraith 336]

I-35 improvements in Texas will never be complete.  

[TDunk 590]

I do love me some infrastructure week.  

[SKJ 1305]

2 hours ago, TDunk said:

I do love me some infrastructure week.  

It's the best.

Can't wait to see the new indictments

[workswithseed 2033]

3 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Maybe they can improve I-35 in Austin after they finish working on I-35 between Waco and Dallas.

My folks said Denton to Dallas has gotten better, but I can't wait for Fort Worth to Denton

[SmokeyBear1861 107]

On 3/27/2018 at 10:27 PM, swraith said:

I-35 improvements in Texas will never be complete.  

You know when they first had the double deck through Austin it was supposed to be 5 exists further North and South. They ran out of money and started/stopped it early. Shits always going to be fucked because of that.

[Stunns38 3357]

Old fat Al Roker or new skinny Al Roker?

Skinny Al, with spandex and a dorky ass helmet on.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Stunns38 3357]

I-35 improvements in Texas will never be complete.  

35 and Riverside is essentially the same as when it was built in the late 50s. No one will have ever traveled from San Antonio to DFW without running into construction.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[bernorange 8348]

Quote

The effort to build high-speed trains connecting Dallas, Arlington and Fort Worth — and eventually Waco, Austin, Laredo and possibly Monterrey, Mexico — took a step forward Thursday.

The Regional Transportation Council, the official planning body for 16 North Texas counties, on Thursday approved $500,000 to continue studying the proposal, which has been in the works for several years.
...
The money includes a $300,000 federal grant plus $200,000 from metropolitan transportation agencies along the Interstate 35 corridor.
...
The move comes as officials from Texas Central Railway continue with their plans to build a bullet train from Dallas to Houston, making it possible to travel between those cities in about 90 minutes. That project would use technology created by the operators of the world-renowned high-speed rail system in Japan.
...
Meadows said high-speed rail companies from France and China are interested in building a line that serves cities along the I-35 corridor, including Waco, Austin, San Antonio and beyond. The line could eventually extend to Laredo and south of the border to Monterrey, Mexico.
...

http://amp.star-telegram.com/news/business/growth/article208728829.html

I'm curious what the money spent studying these proposals is actually buying.  Are there reports being published with any data or results from the studies?  Where is the money going?  Are we ever actually going to see the high speed rail realized?