Should Infrastructure be Politically Controlled?

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http://reason.com/news/show/121827.html

Politicians are drawn to tragedy like flies to pie. Take the Minneapolis bridge collapse. President Bush took a 10-minute helicopter fly-over of the bridge—just long enough to appear compassionate and promise to rebuild the bridge.

But you have to wonder what makes this a federal responsibility. The typical excuse is that the state can't afford such pricey projects, so it behooves the federal government to step in to help. Of course the federal government is also deeply in debt, so it's difficult to pin down exactly what "afford" actually means. Either way, Washington appears set to provide about $250 million to Minneapolis for a new bridge.

Whatever Minnesota's spending constraints, the state can apparently afford to spend hundreds of millions for corporate welfare to Carl Pohlad, the owner of the Minnesota Twins, for a new baseball stadium. Hennepin County, where the bridge is located, recently passed a new .15 percent sales tax solely to pay for Pohlad's new stadium.

...

The bridge didn't collapse because Minnesota couldn't afford to maintain it. The bridge collapsed because the state had other priorities, unrelated to the proper functions of government.

The problem isn't unique to Minnesota. If you compare the percentage of bridge deficiencies with taxes raised, you'll find that some of the highest-taxed states also have some of the worst problems with bridge maintenance. Rhode Island is in the top ten when it comes to taxes collected, and has a higher percentage of deficient bridges than any other state. Pennsylvania has taxes higher than 31 other states, and a bridge deficiency rate that is the second worst in the country. New York is number ten in taxes collected, and is one of the worst when it comes maintenance. In fact, half of the top ten-taxed states are in the bottom ten when to comes to bridge maintenance.

President Bush is now promising around $250 million for a new bridge in Minneapolis. That is considerably less than what the state gave Pohlad, and $750 million less than the state poured into its various sports stadiums. And of course, simply repairing the bridge would have cost a lot less than now having to replace it.

Even if we assume that maintaining local bridges is a federal project, the involvement of politicians means perverted priorities, and maintenance of existing infrastructure, which has no clear constituency, isn't going to rank very high.

Consider the earmark debate. As the Wall Street Journal recently editorialized, "The $250 million in emergency appropriations now flying through Congress for Minnesota is slightly more than half the amount appropriated to Alaska for the 'Bridge to Nowhere' and 'Don Young's Way,' two of the more infamous earmarks from the 2005 bill."

And here's the kicker:

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“A main problem with these earmarks is that they often supersede the more urgent repair and replacement needs identified by state and local officials." Earmarked funds often go unspent because these "vanity projects" are unwanted.

“A full five years after the 1987 transportation bill, for example, no less than 64% of its earmarked money was still unspent because states had more urgent priorities for their share of the spending. By 1997, 55% of the $6.2 billion in earmarks from the 1991 highway bill had gone unspent. We can't report the same numbers for the 1998 and 2005 highway bills because the federal Transportation Department stopped disclosing the figures, lest it embarrass Members of Congress.”

Earmarks divert spending from the necessary projects to the frivolous. The New York Times reports that in spite of historically high spending on transportation, highway funds are allocated according to "the political muscle of lawmakers, rather than dire need," which means "construction on new, politically popular roads and transit projects rather than the mundane work of maintaining the worn-out ones."

The Times adds that politicians are keen to fund politically-correct projects for transport over actual maintenance projects. This has "resulted in expensive transit systems that are not used by the vast majority of American commuters."

The chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is Representative James Oberstar, a Democrat from Minnesota. Oberstar recently bragged about bagging $12 million in funds for the state, but the New York Times notes that $10 million of that "is slated for a new 40-mile commuter rail line to Minneapolis, called the Northstar," and "the remaining $2 million is divided among a new bike and walking path and a few other projects, including highway work and interchange reconstruction."

Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) says that the political process means "that routine but important things like maintenance always get shortchanged because it's nice for somebody to cut a ribbon for a new structure."


Hans Bader at the Competitive Enterprise Institute notes that in Europe, some commentators have been posting messages at Dutch and German newspaper web sites blaming the collapse on low taxes. And C. Michael Walton of the University of Texas seems to endorse this. Walton says that the lack of maintenance was the result of "our backlash to increases in taxes." And even though Sen. Schumer correctly identified the misallocation of transportation spending, his own solution was also to call for new taxes, not for he reallocation of wasted funds.

However, the problem in Minnesota was not the result of low taxes. It's the seventh highest-taxed state in the country.

I'm personally familiar with two other bridge collapses, 1983 collapse of the Mianus Bridge, which killed three, and the 1989 collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct in Oakland, which killed forty.

The Mianus Bridge is in Connecticut, the state with the second highest tax level in the country. And the Cypress Street Viaduct is in California, which ranks at number 12. Both collapses were maintenance related. Though an earthquake triggered the Oakland collapse, the state had neglected to fund retrofitting for the bridge for years, in favor of other projects...
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The rest of the article features a rather elegant solution to political control of road maintenance, but I think fails to address how to create new infrastructure.


Should roads remain politically controlled in light of the tendency for pols to divert funds to pet projects? The obvious solution should be to force them out of office, but the difficulty there lies in information, which the average voter has practically none of.

America itself has one of the worst incumbency rates in the world.

If we can't trust democratic processes to force our governments to actually perform their duties, why should we entrust them with those duties?

Should infrastructure be publically owned? Hell yes. the only reason government exists is to build and maintain infrastructure, to provide necessary social services (fire protection, etc) and for defense.

This is as offensive to me as asking whether we should replace our army with mercenaries.

I say we let Haliburton have no-bid contracts on the building and maintaining of our bridges. That will solve the problem.

Originally Posted by a lurker

Should infrastructure be publically owned?

Wow, you missed the question big time.

Speaking as a Canadian near the Minnesota border, I think a sports stadium in this particular case probably warrants public funds, as there really is a shitload of tourism dollars to be had from milking the Canadian MLB and NFL fans.

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And the Cypress Street Viaduct is in California, which ranks at number 12. Both collapses were maintenance related. Though an earthquake triggered the Oakland collapse, the state had neglected to fund retrofitting for the bridge for years, in favor of other projects...

Like what?

That'd have to equate to some pretty significant sales tax returns.

Nevermind the precedent it sets where team owners can extort taxpayer money by threatening to take their business to another state.

Ideally states shouldn't put up with this kinda bullshit, and owners would actually have to invest in their venues, but somebody somewhere is going to want the team bad enough to use money that isn't theirs.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

Wow, you missed the question big time.

I answered my own question, if you notice.

I'll bite though. If your article's solution isn't privately owned infrastructure, then what is it?

(you could've read the article)

The solution outlined by Peron is basically a private entity owned by the public. A non-profit corporately owned infrastructure where all of the locals are considered shareholders, giving everybody a controlling interest. Tasks are determined by a board appointed by the shareholders and their decisions are voted upon by the shareholders.

Any surpluses acquired through tolls are payed back to the public by virtue of their individual ownership, and amount of use.

I guess surpluses could also be used to appropriate new infrastructure in cooperation with local government, but the shareholders would be voting on that, too.

It basically takes politics out of the equation, and since all money is acquired directly through tolls, there's no way road money can be diverted to other projects.

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Like what?

*shrug*

Here's an opinion on the collapse though:

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http://engineering.com/Library/Artic...-Viaducts.aspx
The Cypress Street Viaduct collapse disaster may have been avoided had the City of Oakland followed the repeated recommendation that the Cypress Street Viaduct be upgraded (Peterson, 1990). Earthquake engineers had suggested many times to the City of Oakland that the Viaduct should be retrofitted with the new technologies that had been developed to counteract the type of concrete breakaway that occurred during the quake. One such technology that was available, and that could have helped to inhibit that type of failure, was steel reinforcing plates that could have been retrofitted to the existing columns (Peterson, 1990). Another, lead/rubber isolators, would have minimized the vibrations the Viaduct experienced during the quake (Peterson, 1990).

It is unknown if additional reinforcement would have been effective. Due to the original design, the viaduct was susceptible to strong external driving forces matching its natural resonant frequencies. Reinforcement may have averted collapse had it been designed to counteract the effects of amplification of the seismic waves created by the soft fill of the valley floor, but the extent of amplification had not yet been realized. Also, the problem of matched resonant frequencies was unknown at the time and would not have been taken into account.

A bit more nuanced than it absolutely could've been avoided but still...

I'd like an answer to my question unless the article writer just wants to use the Cypress without citing what projects were done before it. Because you know, god forbid other bridges get retrofitted first. <- This line could be proven wrong.

Yes but that still doesn't answer the question of the "projects" that were done before this "obvious neglect."

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I'd like an answer to my question unless the article writer just wants to use the Cypress without citing what projects were done before it. Because you know, god forbid other bridges get retrofitted first. <- This line could be proven wrong.

Uh, what projects were done before it, and if this were the case why would it have taken so long to retrofit the aqueduct, assuming that there was any intent to retrofit it in the first place?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

It basically takes politics out of the equation

No, it takes government out of the equation. The proposed corporate entity, its board, its shareholders and its activities would still be subject to politics.

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the state had neglected to fund retrofitting for the bridge for years, in favor of other projects...

He might as well prove his case by citing the so called projects that weren't necessary or not as important. Since you know he's using the cypress as an example of total neglect by government. What I'm saying is, your author could be talking out of his ass if he's not going to be specific about which "projects" kept the bridge from being retrofitted.

If you're gonna assume funds were misspent because it wasn't on the Cypress, you might want to prove it by referencing the projects that were unncessary or arbitrary.

I usually don't participate in PP threads because they tend to make my head hurt, but even I have to look at this and say "You can't be for real...". What I wanna know is, what are these "other projects"? I'm the type of person where you can say you have this and this and that and all this fooferah going on, but if I don't know what these "other projects" are or if there's no proof that all these projects even exist then it just kinda seems like said authors are speaking loudly just to hear themselves talk (IE talking out of your ass). Until we get this information, its a huge hole in the argument because there's no proof that any of this is even relevant or that "said author" isn't some nut with an agenda or otherwise.

But maybe that's just me and I missed something somewhere. **rereads thread a bit more thoroughly...**

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What I'm saying is, your author could be talking out of his ass if he's not going to be specific about which "projects" kept the bridge from being retrofitted.

He could be, sure. However, there's another set of problems like the accessibility of such records and budgets to the public.

In any case, it can absolutely be inferred that the Viaduct retrofitting wasn't given any priority by the government.

Originally Posted by Lord Styphon

No, it takes government out of the equation. The proposed corporate entity, its board, its shareholders and its activities would still be subject to politics.

Which puts us in another quandry. Wouldn't projects become about appeasing those people, rather than "what needs a-fixin'?"

Additional Spam:

Originally Posted by Bradylama

In any case, it can absolutely be inferred that the Viaduct retrofitting wasn't given any priority by the government.

Or other bridges were given more priority. Nice skewing. I'm not saying that I don't believe in gov mismanagement of transportation funds, I've seen it happen, but I severly doubt that someone with a "let's privatize it" agenda is going to keep everything on the level.

Well then be skeptical. It's only one part of an op/ed that concerns the politics surrounding a bridge collapse in 1989. The projects in question did not necessarily have to be unnecessary or frivolous, and if you'd notice they're not identified as such.

However, you could consider money diverted into projects whose purpose regards something other than preventing bridge collapses to be poor priorities, and it's certainly hard to argue that Oakland couldn't fund the bridge if it wanted to.

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Which puts us in another quandry. Wouldn't projects become about appeasing those people, rather than "what needs a-fixin'?"

If you're talking about new infrastructure, that's essentially how it should work already. If you're talking about basic maintenance, then all owners have an interest in maintaining their roads.