What is important infrastructure...

Go spend a little bit of quality time and review the mayors list of infrastructure projects presented 2 weeks ago.  http://www.usmayors.org/mainstreeteconomicrecovery/default.asp The list is long, over 5000 projects. I focused on just one single area roads and highways and found over 2400 projects listed.  Review the descriptions and the projects break down into different types; road repair, new highways, landscaping, sidewalks, curbs cuts, bicycle trails, traffic signals, and design work.

Obviously there’s different kinds of infrastructure projects each having different project cost and payback. Resurfacing and road repair projects are obviously important, but what is the payback of all those resurfacing and repair projects? There are many traffic signal replacements or upgrades listed as intersection improvements. One could argue that an intersection improvement is going to improve the flow of traffic thereby produce a better payback for the cost spent than a simple resurfacing project.

Some cities are very tight with what they were asking for, the list short and focused on road and intersection improvements.   Other cities provided a laundry list of projects, including bicycle trails landscaping curb cuts and beautification projects. Dig deeper and it becomes harder and harder to understand what cities are asking to do; is the project really a road improvement project or is it something else? Obviously some of the road projects are much larger than just road itself and include work for sidewalks, traffic lights, “streetscape” and signage. Some projects simply list “replace all the sidewalks in the city”.

The question becomes; “How do you set a priority?” To set a priority at the federal level based off of the short descriptions provided becomes a struggle of deciding which project is more deserving than the other. You really can’t set a priority at a federal level for detail projects as listed by the cities, there is no “impact” provided other than an estimate of the jobs created. So do you just give a big pile of cash to each one of the cities and let them decide how to spend? How do you set criteria guidelines for how to spend federal money? 

If the goal is just to “create” jobs, with no regard to the “payback”, then the effort is just 5,000 “Projects to Nowhere”. I thought that our future President has a better vision than that?

Many of the people “released” out of the construction industry in the past two years were not involved in road construction.  Those construction workers looking for work built houses, not quite the same people that we need to have on road construction projects.

Many of the people who are now looking for jobs never have touched the working end of a shovel; they worked a keyboard attached to a computer, put widgets together on an assembly line, or worked as a AP clerk. Can we really put a auto worker, or a analyst from Bear-Sterns or Leman Brothers behind the controls of a backhoe?    

As I sat behind numerous traffic lights my way to the office this morning I kept thinking about the traffic signal projects that different cities listed. The city of Dallas Texas for instance had a large project to develop an integrated signaling system; the benefit that it would reduce idle time in traffic and have an impact on the pollution in the city. 

Figuring out how to synchronize signals and tying the signals together into a network across a metropolitan area is not just going to create construction worker jobs; it will create jobs for computer network engineers, software developers, process engineers and project managers. A project like this takes major brainpower and organizational skills to accomplish. The jobs created by this type of project would be highly skilled high-paying jobs. It would call on consulting engineering companies and construction management companies.

Take this type of project one step further. A great deal of effort in observation of the traffic patterns is needed to provide the input needed to design the system. Field observation work is needed to pull one of these projects off. In developing a project like this could we develop a way to train some of our newly unemployed management personnel to be able to observe and report?

Level field work includes the actual construction and installation of the data communications network that connects the intersections together into a network. Some of these jobs would be infrastructure construction jobs to install fiber optic cable to connect the intersections and cameras. Other jobs would include the installation of control panels and the electronic equipment in the controller’s.

A project like this creates a great deal of demand for computer network equipment. Routers, fiber optic cable, relays and other hardware is needed to make the network work. The hardware manufacturers would see an increased demand for their systems. Engineers, manufacturing managers and assembly line workers would have plenty of work to do.

Add an ongoing monitoring and maintenance program and you have a sustained set of jobs. This stuff needs to be serviced, the traffic patterns monitored, programming updated, the systems expended. More jobs to keep the program working right.

Okay, so what is the payback? They don’t know for sure, but an adaptive traffic signal system that is designed to reduce idling at stoplights during peak traffic periods and flows traffic faster would have a substantial impact on the economy and environment of a metropolitan area. Just think of the gallons and gallons of fuel that would not be burned every day.

That’s just one idea of how we can come up with infrastructure projects that spent money wisely, puts back to work a broad spectrum of people and provides one heck of a payback ecological and economic.

Do you have some bright ideas?