“For the first time in memory, the nation has no outsize public works project under way.”
So says New York Times architecture critic, Louis Uchitelle. America used to do big cool stuff, he says. The Interstates! The Erie Canal! That whole golden spike thing! The Big Dig! (?!) Those were “feats of engineering.” But look at us today… we’re just doing lame and sleepy projects like the Salt Lake City light rail system or that “maybe it’ll be done by 2050, maybe not” Second Ave Subway. The resulting infrastructural duldroms, Uchitelle (or, more likely, his editor) has labelled “the Superproject void.” [SButtonZ button="digg"]
But things might not be quite that bad. Uchitelle neglects to mention that California voters OK’ed a $10 billion bond issue for a 220 mph high speed rail link from LA to San Francisco–San Diego to Sacramento, even. The work is already underway. Sure, it’s at an early stage, but planning and engineering are “work” too. The project is vastly more important than the Big Dig.
Beyond that, U.S. cities seem to be getting semi-serious about rebuilding streetcar networks. We made this map to show the trend, but there are new examples cropping up all the time.
The so-called “smart grid” project is a superproject by any measure. It’s at a very early stage and a lot more decentralized than, say, digging the Erie canal was, but no less ambitious.
Worth mentioning also is that there are remarkable “superprojects” underway in other countries that could be setting a longer term agenda for us. China is building out the world’s best high speed rail network, and doing so very quickly: 16,000 miles of new track by 2020. They’ll also be getting a national freight rail network out of the bargain by repurposing parts of their old passenger network.
Northern Europe is pursuing a renewable energy generation “superproject” of sorts. The wind farms off the western coast of Denmark are feats of engineering and look like pretty solid candidates to “enhance the economy.” Some people don’t count power generation as “infrastructure,” per se, but that’s just a technicality–there’s a good chance we’ll be building them off the Atlantic coast of the US within the next decade.
The real question is this: We’re a heavily populated wealthy democracy with a dysfunctional political culture that favors paralysis over action. Accepting that this is the case and unlikely to change soon, what sort of agenda should we be setting for ourselves?
Tags: NEWS AND VIEWS
Are we forgetting the ARC Project in NJ and NY? They’re only pouring several billion into those. Or the East Side Access for the LIRR? There ARE a few superprojects out there, but they’re not as visible, as say the Golden Gate Bridge, Interstate Highways, or even many bridge/tunnel projects.
The fact is that these projects (albeit important) don’t muster the same public excitement as ones in the past do, mostly due to budget shortfalls, which prolong projects and wear out public confidence in these feats of civil engineering.
I would think the ARC tunnel between NJ/NY, at nearly $10 billion, would qualify as a “super-project”
Oy! Salt Lake City rail project isn’t lame. It’s moving 80 square miles of non-dense population around. Do you know what city has worse pollution than LA? Oh that’s right – Salt Lake. We live in a valley surrounded by mountains, and when the temperatures drop the pollution fills up the valley like a big bowl. The only thing that can break it up is a storm system, not exactly common in the desert. I like the idea of developing a usable mass transit system that gives me a few more days of breathable air.
California HSR doesn’t count until shovels are in the ground I think. Why?
You have a bunch of NIMBYs in Palo Alto trying hard to kill the whole project. And the US is sort of the opposite of China now in this regard.
In China the government can say: OK this infrastructure project will benefit millions of people, so we are going to draw a line on the map, and this is where the rail line (or whatever) will go, and to hell with local opposition.
In the US the government can say, OK this infrastructure project will benefit millions of people, so lets talk about it for 10 years, do planing for another 10 years, and then if a few dozen NIMBYs in Palo Alto, or Menlo Park say, “We don’t want it because it will disrupt our view”, then the whole project gets killed.
Grand public works don’t happen in America now because local NIMBYs and budget worry warts delay and delay, then outright kill projects with endless debate about money, endless environmental reviews, and endless lawsuits.
The ARC project is definitely a megaproject — and tremendously exciting in many respects. But I would agree with Uchitelle that it doesn’t belong in a category with the other projects he names. He doesn’t make an explicit distinction between “megaprojects” (an accepted, established term) and “superprojects” (which he kind of coined). But it seems clear enough — the latter implies more of an epochal step forward.
There are quite a few megaprojects in progress these days, including the third water tunnel into NYC, which is (if memory serves and I’m too lazy to google it right now) dollar-wise a bigger undertaking than the ARC tunnel.
Couldn’t agree more about SLC rail — definitely not lame. But was echoing tone of NYT piece.
JR
I wouldn’t say that its a void in the general sense of the word, more a void in information available through the mainstream media.
There are a number of Mega Projects, as those mentioned in the comments above, in progress across the country. I think one of the reasons might be that the projects aren’t Hoover Dam-esque, meaning people who don’t follow these things like the fine people on this site do,
, don’t have a visual of the magnitude/scale of the projects. Street car and Light Rail systems I’d class as Mega and a new highway also
A Super Project I’d define as something to the magnitude of a High Speed Rail Network across the country or the Interstate Highway system or the reinvention of entire cities such as Detroit and New Orleans which have both been devastated. Returning them to a former or new glory, whichever comes first.
By one definition “Mega Projects” = the US Interstate Highway System, the German Autobahn, or the Chinese/European High Speed Rail Systems. I believe we are the verge of a new era of mega projects – esp with the Administration’s HSR vision due sometime early next year. Let’s wait and see their ideas for sustaining it.
What dysfunctional system? The failure isn’t systematic, its in the leadership we happen to have at the moment. We spend 2% of the federal budget on infrastructure and it shows. Bridges falling into the river in Minneapolis or slowly caving in on itself in Oakland.
There is no reason why the siting and environmental issues couldn’t be federalized and expedited. Not skipped, expedited. An aggressive ($20 billion per year) HSR scheme could be paid for simply by foregoing the estate tax reduction recently proposed by the Republicans.
More megaprojects that were ignored:
Deep Tunnel (Chicago, IL)
O’Hare Modernization (Chicago, IL)
GPS Based Flight Control replacing radar (National)
Modernization of the Electrical Grids (National)
Linking together the National Grids (Texas)
Hoover Dam Bypass (Hoover Dam)
Alaskan Pipelines (Alaska-Canada)
And that’s just off the top of my head. Not to mention that the only reason we don’t have more and more comprehensive transit systems everywhere is due to a lack of funds. With Rep. Oberstar’s seeming desire to fix some of the structural issues with the transportation bill so it no longer becomes just a ‘highway’ bill that should change over time.
Then again, I suppose ‘Things Are Pretty Normal’ doesn’t sell many papers.
But look at us today… we’re just doing lame and sleepy projects like the Salt Lake City light rail system or that “maybe it’ll be done by 2050, maybe not” Second Ave Subway. The resulting infrastructural duldroms, Uchitelle (or, more likely, his editor) has labelled “the Superproject void.”
Gosh I just can’t imagine why. Maybe if we don’t talk about the war, it will just go away…
But Scott, while useful, none of those things really look like a grabbing-the-future-by-the-balls style infrastructure marvel.
As Jebediah Reed says I think there is a difference between a Super project, and a mega project.
Channel Tunnel/Seikan Tunnel = Super Project
Deep Tunnel, ARC etc = Mega project
Hong Kong International Airport / Kansai International Airport = Super Project
O’Hare Modernization = mega project (maybe, at most).
You don’t need dazzling new construction to show off how great your city is. The Big Dig was a disaster. So is ARC, which, due to the inclusion of a brand-new deep-level station, is budgeted at three times the cost of just twinning the existing tunnels. The Interstates put many local governments in near-bankruptcy, and destroyed American cities.
The government shouldn’t be engaging in public works to employ civil engineers.
[...] journalist Louis Uchitelle complains about a “superproject void” in the Times; Infrastructurist responds, arguing that California’s high speed rail, the nation-wide revival of streetcar networks, [...]
[...] 6. But, what about scale? – mammoth + NYT + Infrastructurist [...]
How about replacing the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge? Well, at least the eastern half. Check out the project and get back to me on whether it compares in size, complexity, and importance to building the bridge in the first place. I’d say yes.
One thing that sets the Hoover Dam, GG Bridge, intercontinental railway, etc apart from today’s projects is that they were much more on the cutting edge than the projects we see around us today. Today’s projects are no less massive, expensive, or complex as those were, but there are so many more of them around the world and very little is truly new any more.
Perhaps the first permanent installation on the moon will qualify.