February’s Headlines

Posted on Friday February 27th by The Infrastructurist

Feb 27:
The 2010 budget is out. Highlights include:

  • $1 billion-a-year high speed rail grant program to the states;
  • $1.3 billion in USDA loans and grants for rural broadband from the USDA;
  • A proposed carbon cap and trade program that could raise $80 billion by 2012;
  • the administration “will emphasize the use of economic analysis and performance measurement in transporation planning.”

Other news:

  • New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg and city planner Janette Sadik Khan unveiled a plan to turn midtown sections of Broadway into pedestrian plazas. (Streetsblog)
  • Manufacturing in Indiana has been hard-hit in recent years — but the clean energy sector is thriving. (EDF)
  • A $25 billion loan program for electric car technology isn’t rolling yet. (NYT)
  • US Capitol to switch from coal power to natural gas? (AFP)
  • Palo Alto residents want the high speed LA-to-SF trains to be “invisible” — a rail technology that even Japan and Europe don’t have. (San Jose Mercury News)

Feb 26:

  • After a two year study a federal blue ribbon commission on transporation funding recommends: raise the gas tax and start taxing motorists on miles driven.
  • Richard Branson’s Virgin is planning to bid on high speed rail projects in the US. Branson particularly fancies the line linking LA and SF. (Times – UK)
  • Melbourne is planning to build a car-free suburb in an area that burned in recent wildfires. (Treehugger)
  • Broadband infrastructure as bailout program gains popularity around the world. (IHT)
  • Transport Politic counts at least 12 high speed rail projects that are in the planning stage in the US.
  • That wonderfully soft toilet paper with the cartoon bear mascots? It’s killing the planet. (NYT)

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Feb 11:

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  • Obama wants some school construction and other cuts restored to the final stimulus bill. Here are the House and Senate (it passed!) versions compared in very fine detail. (WSJ)
  • Obama says that 675,000 construction jobs will be created by the stimulus bill. But for Tim Baxter of Atlanta and the other 7.5 million jobless people in the industry, the approval process for “shovel-ready” projects is looking awfully long. (CNN)

    • Massachusetts could see $11 billion in stimulus money for infrastructure. Already the political process about how to spend it is getting “heated.” One politician observed that every town has already submitted a plan for its own Taj Mahal. (Boston Globe)
    • The $47 billion in stimulus funding for high-tech infrastructure raises some questions about whether campaign contributors might be calling in favors from the Obama adminstration. (NYT)
    • Nearly 50,000 people in Kentucky and Missouri were still without power two weeks after the ice storm that ravaged the area. “They forgot about us here,” says one woman who remembers when the impoverished southern Missouri county where she lives first got electricity under FDR. (Star Trib)

    • Zoos in Denver and Dallas were both struck by power outages. (Denver Post/Dallas Morning News)
    • Will South Carolina be the center of America’s nuclear energy revival? (Counterpunch)
    • China started construction on the world’s longest natural gas pipeline. It will run extend more than 5,000 miles and will be operational in, ahem, 2011. Yes, things get built much, much faster in China. (Tehran Times)

    Feb 10:

    • Obama, in his first prime-time press conference, defended the stimulus package. In his opening remarks, he listed some infrastructure-related jobs that would be created: “jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, repairing our dangerously deficient dams and levees, [...] building the wind turbines and solar panels and fuel-efficient cars, [...] modernizing our costly health care system, [...] creating the 21st-century classrooms, libraries and labs for millions of children across America.” (CNN)
    • When the real cost of coal is included in electric rates, they are 2-3 times higher than what consumers now pay. (WSJ)
    • For the first time ever, the Chinese are buying more cars than Americans. (AP)
    • Treehugger takes a look at the state of the art in eco-friendly trucks – which sounds like an oxymoron and probably is… but a garbage truck powered by garbage has nice “Gee, whiz!” appeal. Meanwhile an official from the US Postal Service, which has the largest fleet of vehicles in the country, wants to run them on solar power. (Treehugger, NYT)

    Feb 9:

    • After days of wrangling and even (horror of horrors) having to work on a weekend, the Senate settled on a compromise stimulus bill. The biggest cut ($40 billion) from the House version was in direct aid to states. Everything from energy efficient buildings to wetlands rehabilitation to broadband also felt a share of the pain. (CNN, WaPo)
    • School construction funds took a $16 billion cut. At cash-strapped universities across the country hundreds of construction projects are on hold “from a library extension at Fresno State to new dorms at Washington University in St. Louis and a biology lab at Yale.” The House designated $6 billion for restarting these, but the Senate version eliminates that funding. (AP via Talking Points Memo)
    • Transportation funding got tweaked. Roads and bridges are still getting $27 billion, and high speed rail gets $2 billion it didn’t get in the House version. But billions in transit funding is gone, going instead to a discretionary fund that the Department of Transportation can spend on whatever it sees fit. (AP, The Transit Politic)
    • Everybody likes a smart grid. Well, except the people who don’t want to look at new power lines. And the consumers who find it “confusing” and “boring” to try and adjust their electricity demand in response to cues from the utility.
    • With all the money being committed to financial stabilization, the government could just pay off everyone’s mortgage. (Bloomberg)
    • A water main break turned some Baltimore streets into “fast rushing streams” over the weekend. (Baltimore Sun)
    • A chunk of concrete that fell off an overpass on Boston’s Storrow Drive has some local residents fearing death by faulty infrastructure. (Boston Herald)

    Feb 6:

    • The fate of the stimulus bill “remains unclear” after Senators were unable to reach a compromise yesterday. Democratic leaders are hoping today is the day. The most powerful people in Washington are still Ben Nelson (D, NE), Susan Collins (R, ME), and Olympia Snowe (R, ME), centrists who are on the fence about the bill and looking to pare it back by about $100 billion — which could include cuts to Amtrak (WaPo, NYT, Transport Politic).
    • More detail on the apparent demise of the $50 billion Boxer/Inhofe infrastructure amendment to the stimulus package. (Streetsblog)
    • And speaking of coal-fired plants, the administration gave a sign that it plans be tough in enforcing environmental laws when it filed a lawsuit against Kansas utility Westar for not using the best available emissions control technology. (Guardian – UK)
    • Japan went on a $6.3 trillion public works building spree in the ’90s seeking pull the economy out of the doldrums. Looking back, the lessons are complex: Japan did build some bridges to nowhere and has a lot of debt, but the spending also may have staved off collapse. And since the US has so neglected it’s infrastructure, similar spending may be more effective here. (NYT)
    • “Shovel readiness” is a lousy criterion for deciding how to spend on infrastructure. (Popular Mechanics)

    Feb 5:
    * As the stimulus drama continues to unfold, Obama is “losing the message war,” says Politico. He’s meeting one-on-one with centrist Senators Ben Nelson and Susan Collins, who for the moment seem to be in the driver’s seat. They reportedly want to trim $50 billion from the bill. (Politico, CQ)

    * There continue to be rumors of a $50 billion infrastructure amendment to be offered by Sens. Boxer and Inhofe. As reported by this website, sources say that amendment will now include transit and water elements, instead of solely highways.

    * The Senate adopted a $2 billion amendment funding “shovel ready” affordable housing.

    * A great visual breakdown of the stimulus bill showing where the money is going and when it will be spent.

    * According to the CEO of Caterpillar, infrastructure projects in the stimulus would only boost construction business by about 5 percent this year. (CNBC)

    * Last year China had blackouts. Since the economic slowdown, there’s a glut of power. (WSJ)

    * Secretary of Energy Steven Chu doesn’t think Americans grasp the implications of global warming. Of the Golden State, he says: “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California. I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going.” (LA Times)

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    One Response to “February’s Headlines”

    1. Ebey says:
      November 16, 2009 at 1:38 pm

      Cooler heads prevail though, and thats why your guild is still around. Finally the reaction of the server including the lack of people to jump on the Jeff Nemerofsky with their perceived slights, leaves me to believe that all in all our interactions with our server mates have been fairly strong. While it may have been in poor taste, I used the free publicity to highlight my guilds recruitment needs. I expressed Jeff Nemerofsky regret at his dissatisfaction, without taking accountability for that dissatisfaction. http://www.jeffanemerofsky.com/

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