Posted on Tuesday July 28th by The Infrastructurist | 313
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- Why did oil prices shoot up to $150 last year? A while back, US regulators ruled it was mostly supply and demand, not speculation. Now… they’ve changed their mind. It was speculation after all! (WSJ)
- Eight Midwestern governors signed off on a high speed rail plan that would connect a dozen cities in the region, from Ohio to Iowa and Michigan to Missouri. One estimate has the project costing $10 billion over a 10 to 20 year timeframe. (CSM)
- Last month, more than 49,000 infrastructure-related jobs were “created or sustained” with stimulus money, according to a House report. In May, the figure was 21,000. As of the end of june, 5,000 projects have been put out to bid and 142 completed. (Reuters)
- The Senate is debating a $34 billion energy and water bill. It includes $5 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers for civil works — but since the agency has a $60 billion project backlog, it doesn’t allow any new ones. But pork-hungry politicians might change that. (Greenwire)
- Edward Glaeser, a Harvard professor and skeptic about high speed rail investment, has started a new series on the subject at the Economix blog. Obama’s vision of HSR has “powerful magic,” he says, but the debate must start with reliable estimates.
- From the same ‘hood: The Freakonomics blog–usually quite good–went off the rails last week with a post about the climatic (non-)benefits of HSR. CAHSR blog reponds. And Transport Politic gets to the bottom line: we need a rail system powered by clean electricity.
- NYC’s 19,000 miles of roads would stretch nearly around the world. But even as city road crews filled 300,000 potholes last year, they are having trouble keeping up with the required repairs on Gotham’s streets. (NYT)
- Unknown vandals in Amsterdam have started throwing Smart Cars–those snazzy and ultra-efficient urban automobiles that resemble golf carts–into the city’s canals. No reason, apparently, except that they’re there and they’re lightweight. (BuzzFeed)
Photo mock-up stolen from Murdoch’s The Sun
July 28th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
That “Smart Cars” item reminds me of my (much) younger days when Volkswagen “beetles” would be lifted up and placed on the sidewalk by rowdy young men. I have photos some where in my midden heap showing an Austin-Healy Sprite that had been placed behind a traffic barrier by some Cal Poly students who want to play a joke on one of the cheerleaders. She did manage to maneuver it back to the road, so all was well at the end.
July 29th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
So for the cost of about 2 mid-sized airports, we could connect the largest cities in the upper-Midwest with high speed rail connections with lower carbon footprints and less noise.
Seems pretty straightforward.