"Our transportation network has been the envy of the world, but we're starting to fall behind," warned Minnesota Rep. James Oberstar during the William O. Lipinski Symposium on Transportation Policy at Northwestern University in Evanston. The gloomy financial forecast is "all the more reason to invest in transportation infrastructure," said Oberstar, a Democrat who chairs the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "Every billion invested in infrastructure means 34,000 jobs."
Rep. Jerry Costello, a downstate Democrat who heads up the House Subcommittee on Aviation, said the House will likely take up an economic stimulus package after Thanksgiving and added, "I've been assured that a large part of that will be for infrastructure."
Saturday, November 15, 2008
More Stim
Some high level officials gathered in Evanston to talk about transportation's future.
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3 comments:
"Our transportation network has been the envy of the world, but we're starting to fall behind,"
Actually, the rest of the world stopped looking to the US for transport leadership 20 years ago. I was shocked at just how behind things are here in the US compared to Australia (which I had always assumed was a backwater). You roads are crumbling to gravel (the interstates were impressive in the 60s, now they are wide cobbled streets), your rails are so bad that express trains only go 40mph, your aeroplanes feel like a step back in time and the airports are like 80s shopping malls (actually, the shopping malls are like 80s shopping malls for that matter ;).
But the good news is that it is easy to improve things!
Maybe the good Congressman forgot about the Interstate bridge that collapsed in his own state a couple years ago.
The P.C.C. streetcar set the standard world-wide for light rail vehicles for many years. But then it got left behind as the technology went on.
Now other countries have set new standards that we have to catch up to.
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