{"id":1455,"date":"2015-07-06T15:49:30","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T20:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=1455"},"modified":"2015-07-08T19:48:44","modified_gmt":"2015-07-09T00:48:44","slug":"the-highway-system-is-going-to-shrink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/07\/06\/the-highway-system-is-going-to-shrink\/","title":{"rendered":"The Highway System is Going to Shrink"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, the director of the Iowa Department of Transportation\u00a0Paul Trombino made these remarks<\/a> about the highways his department is responsible for in Iowa:<\/p>\n

I said the numbers before. 114,000 lane miles, 25,000 bridges, 4,000 miles of rail.\u00a0I said this a lot in my conversation when we were talking about fuel tax increases.\u00a0It\u2019s not affordable.\u00a0Nobody\u2019s going to pay.<\/em><\/p>\n

… And so the reality is, the system is going to shrink.<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing I have to do. Bridges close themselves. Roads deteriorate and go away. That\u2019s what happens.<\/em><\/p>\n

And reality is, for us, let\u2019s not let the system degrade and then we\u2019re left with sorta whatever\u2019s left. Let\u2019s try to make a conscious choice \u2013 it\u2019s not going to be perfect, I would agree it\u2019s going to be complex and messy \u2013 but let\u2019s figure out which ones we really want to keep.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

And quite honestly, it\u2019s not everything that we have, which means some changes.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many DOT directors around the country privately admit to a similar kind of thinking, but Mr. Trombino is the first to say it aloud to the public, for which he should be lauded — and emulated. \u00a0Because the cold, financial truth is, we have way overbuilt our national roadway system compared to what we can afford or be willing to pay to maintain. \u00a0We’ve done this because as a result of a 60-year experiment with auto-oriented infrastructure, cheap money (borrowing) and faulty government policies and incentives that have aided and abetted this flawed idea.<\/p>\n

For the last few decades, I have been become increasingly thoughtful\u00a0about auto-centric planning and its profound impact on our nation\u2019s infrastructure\u00a0and urban development. \u00a0Many\u00a0people never really think about our country\u2019s decaying infrastructure until they blow a tire when their auto runs over a neglected pothole, but even the densest politician realizes our transportation infrastructure is broken. \u00a0Conventional wisdom\u00a0suggests we should throw a lot of money at our decaying road, bridge and rail system to fix it.<\/p>\n

I insist\u00a0that no new roads should be built until the nation\u2019s existing road infrastructure is fixed. \u00a0This may seem a little draconian given the fact politicians love to name new roads after themselves, but it’s become obvious that infrastructure planning over the past 60 years has\u00a0revolved around the automobile rather than people. \u00a0 Some would even suggest transportation planning was more of a social experiment than any real attempt to develop a\u00a0limited but\u00a0effective transportation system.<\/p>\n

Regardless of one\u2019s point of view, our current infrastructure\u00a0planning requires quite a bit of rethinking. \u00a0Especially at the city level, we lost sight of what the infrastructure is there for — the people.<\/p>\n

\n

The indicator species of a successful city is not the automobile, it’s people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, the director of the Iowa Department of Transportation\u00a0Paul Trombino made these remarks about the highways his department is responsible for in Iowa: I said the numbers before. 114,000 lane miles, 25,000 bridges, 4,000 miles of rail.\u00a0I said this a lot in my conversation when we were talking about fuel \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,6,10,9,8,4,3,2],"class_list":["post-1455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-america","tag-civic","tag-economics","tag-highways","tag-infrastructure","tag-place","tag-sprawl","tag-suburbia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1455"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1458,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455\/revisions\/1458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}