Great ideas for moving freight, getting commuters to work, and making it easier to walk and bike around keep surfacing while the financing and politics for such projects are getting more difficult to work out. Private companies are keeping money on the sidelines, while the debate on transportation project spending continues at the highest government levels.
The Gabriel River Infrastructure Development (GRID) project, a futuristic proposal to transform the Port of Long Beach into a compact, zero-emission, fully electrified super terminal served by electric freight pipelines to inland distribution centers, was presented yesterday at the National Urban Freight Conference in Long Beach. GRID is an exciting alternative to existing plans requiring more real estate and conventional truck and rail loading procedures.
The Model Design Manual for Living Streets, a joint project of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, was unveiled last Thursday in downtown LA. Focusing on street design that accommodates cars, pedestrians, cyclists and transit users, it also serves as a template for improving streetscape aesthetics, sustainability, and commercial appeal. On a parallel path, the 2012 Regional Transportation Plan being finalized includes a proposal for completing all Southern California Association of Governments bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure plans while closing the gaps between them at an estimated cost of $1.63 billion for the entire region.
The 30/10 Initiative has gone national with America Fast Forward, using the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) to leverage billions of federal dollars. Antonio Villaraigosa and other metropolitan mayors have been promoting it in Washington. At the 10th annual gathering of transportation professionals in Southern California, Mobility 21, the need to upgrade America’s transportation infrastructure was a major theme. American Society of Civil Engineers President-elect Andy Hermann presented its commissioned report Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Surface Transportation Infrastructure, showing that U.S. transportation infrastructure deficiencies cost American households and businesses roughly $130 billion. (Official infographic at this link.)
The U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held a hearing yesterday on part of President Obama’s jobs bill providing a one-time $10 billion allocation for transportation projects. CNBC’s short segment yesterday covered the issues and politics over creating and funding a National Infrastructure Bank.
An idea floated by the Infrastructurist (and repeated in the latest Transit Coalition monthly enewsletter, where this Editor read about it) is to flip the President’s job proposal funding for highways and transit – giving $27 billion to transit projects and just $9 billion to highways. The Transit Coalition supports the idea as an antidote to decades of highway expansion; another justification is the trend in urban highway teardown projects around the country.
Such forward-looking transportation ideas deserve consideration. What a shame so much money was misallocated and poorly invested leading up to 2008 and we are still paying for it in this extended Great Recession. There are several great ideas out there for improving the U.S. transportation sector’s efficiency, competitiveness, and sustainability.