What is going on with American transportation and infrastructure?

[Suburbia]

I live in New Jersey, and one of the big problems in the Garden State is transportation. New Jersey Transit, the state's transportation agency and one of the largest in the country has been underfunded under the Christie-Guadagno administration. Another agency that I use when I am in New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has faced problems under the Cuomo-Duffy and Cuomo-Hochul administration, but from previous administrations as well. Amtrak, the national transportation agency, has problems. In the South, some cities like Atlanta have bad transportation with highways. What is going on with American infrastructure?

http://www.nj.com/traffic/index.ssf/2017/06/path_to_run_more_service_to_move_displaced_nj_tran.html#incart_river_index

http://www.nj.com/traffic/index.ssf/2017/04/would_tunnels_killed_by_christie_have_cured_nj_transits_ills.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2017/06/from_subways_to_penn_station_nyc_transit_is_a_mess.html

[Ban my account ffs!]

Lack of investment.  And many systems built in the 1960s and 70s are now beyond their planned usefulness and need to be completely upgraded or rebuilt.

Americans are also very fickle with transit use.  It spikes when gas prices go up but then goes right back down with gas prices.  You can't run a robust system on this kind of customer demand.  That may change with Millennials but who knows.. it might go right back with the next generation too.

[Sumner 1868]

Obama didn't use his brief chance to pass a major infrastructural revival and this is the end result.

[pbrower2a]

The next big economic downturn will feature big expenditures in infrastructure, much as was so in the 1930s. The George Washington Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the original (now replaced) Trans-Bay Bridge, and Boulder (now Hoover) Dam were Depression-era big projects. Big construction projects hire huge numbers of workers out of unemployment and devour huge quantities of steel, concrete, and glass. 

There is a large number of big infrastructure projects awaiting funding and votes. Michigan alone could stand to transform I-94 west of Ann Arbor from a tricky old four-lane freeway into a calmer six-lane expressway and re-engineer the tricky 69-94 cloverleaf interchange into a directional interchange. We could use the next generation of railroads. Urban transit  (could Atlanta use a subway?) almost asks for itself.

I wonder if a bridge from Long Island to Connecticut makes sense.   

[pbrower2a]

Obama didn't use his brief chance to pass a major infrastructural revival and this is the end result.

He pushed Obamacare first.

The Trump agenda is privatization to monopolistic profiteers in return for what in many cases might best be described as maintenance.

[Green Line]

The gas tax should be increased to pay for more transport.

[Santander]

Americans are also very fickle with transit use.  It spikes when gas prices go up but then goes right back down with gas prices.  You can't run a robust system on this kind of customer demand.  That may change with Millennials but who knows.. it might go right back with the next generation too.

It does? Interesting.

[ProudModerate2]

We need it, but to repair our infrastructure is so very, very expensive.
I don't see how we can fit it into the budget, but somehow we need to.
A financial quagmire.

[Mr. Smith]

Americans are also very fickle with transit use.  It spikes when gas prices go up but then goes right back down with gas prices.  You can't run a robust system on this kind of customer demand.  That may change with Millennials but who knows.. it might go right back with the next generation too.

It does? Interesting.

What's so shocking about this? It's well known how individualistic the American is. Only the wallet can sway this tendency.

The car is a gift to such sentiment. But no one wants to pay the gas to go with it.

Certainly doesn't help that with so little money given, the fat cats at the top will lap up what does come first, then they'll get more funding propositions passed,rinse and repeat.

At least that seems to be how BART works.

[Jeffster]

Obama didn't use his brief chance to pass a major infrastructural revival and this is the end result.

He pushed Obamacare first.

The Trump agenda is privatization to monopolistic profiteers in return for what in many cases might best be described as maintenance.

The stimulus came first, and it only had about $100 billion for infrastructure and science out of a total cost of over $800 billion, with actual transportation infrastructure at about $48 billion. We knew since the mid-00's that our nation needed at least $1 trillion in infrastructure spending to repair or replace everything. This was the case of Democrats being too timid, thinking that if they kept the cost of the stimulus down then they'd get less public backlash. They should have realized that you either go big or go home. If you're going to do a big spending bill, then do a really big one and get everything you need, because it will be less likely you get another chance. And by doing a smaller bill, it ends up being less effective at getting the economy going. They passed the stimulus in Feb. 2009 and other than a few months in spring 2010 due to census hiring, we still had monthly job losses in Sept. 2010. So with an unemployment rate of 9.8% in Nov. 2010 and the ugly fight to pass Obamacare they got destroyed in the midterms.

[SingingAnalyst]

Come to Michigan, where the state flower is the orange construction barrel. Where there are two seasons: Winter and Construction. You get the idea.

[Suburbia]

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo hired former MTA boss and 2013 NYC Republican mayoral nominee Joe Lhota to head up the agency again.

http://nypost.com/2017/06/21/cuomo-taps-joe-lhota-to-head-troubled-mta-once-again/

http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/transit/2017/06/21/after-another-morning-of-delays--mta-says-it-failed-its-riders.html

[Storebought]

I'd favor infrastructure spending to go towards the organized dismantlement of our transportation system: Urban freeway knockdowns (can't come swiftly enough), federal and Interstate highway decommissioning, regional airport (fore)closures, shuttering underused Mississippi/Ohio river ports. Every Sunbelt city should just abandon the pretense of running a transit system already.

[Suburbia]

A bad derailment in Manhattan's A train this morning.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/nyregion/subway-train-derails-in-manhattan.html


The MTA really needs to have some changes completely.

[dead0man]

I'd favor infrastructure spending to go towards the organized dismantlement of our transportation system: Urban freeway knockdowns (can't come swiftly enough), federal and Interstate highway decommissioning, regional airport (fore)closures, shuttering underused Mississippi/Ohio river ports. Every Sunbelt city should just abandon the pretense of running a transit system already.

yeah, screw Americans!  What have they ever done, nothing for nobody.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

A bad derailment in Manhattan's A train this morning.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/nyregion/subway-train-derails-in-manhattan.html


The MTA really needs to have some changes completely.

It doesn't make for flashy headlines, so Cuomo isn't interested.

[dead0man]

And DC's is somehow much much worse.

[Suburbia]

A bad derailment in Manhattan's A train this morning.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/nyregion/subway-train-derails-in-manhattan.html


The MTA really needs to have some changes completely.

It doesn't make for flashy headlines, so Cuomo isn't interested.

True. I like some of Cuomo's style, I'd vote for him against Trump, because he has seen job growth in NY, but public transportation could cripple his political career.

[Suburbia]

NYC commuters are fed up. It could decrease turnout in NYC, which Democrats need to do well in 2018.

NY-GOV 2018 is still Likely/Safe D. People should register to vote if they want real leadership. I commute to NYC sometimes as a NJ resident. The MTA needs changes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAqqTlxt9qM

http://www.mta.info/

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

While you all whine about NYCs subways, Louisville's highways are crumbling, traffic is always a nightmare my only public transportation option is the TARC bus system which is notoriously unreliable. I think my city can definitely use a light rail or it can return and expand a streetcar system across suburbia, but of course nothing ever changes.