{"id":209587798,"date":"2011-08-23T18:49:58","date_gmt":"2011-08-23T18:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=209587798"},"modified":"2011-08-23T18:49:58","modified_gmt":"2011-08-23T18:49:58","slug":"pretending-it-is-1952","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=209587798","title":{"rendered":"Pretending it is 1952"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Marohn, New Urban Network
\nThe American Society of Civil Engineers has just released a report that should be titled, "Pretending it is 1952." Like a broken record, ASCE is again painting a bleak picture of the future if American politicians \u2014 as if they need to be plied \u2014 won’t open up the checkbook for our noble engineers. And in a way that the Soviet Central Committee would have expected from Pravda, the media and blogger world is sounding the alarm. This feels more like a cult than a serious discussion on America’s future.
\nIn the Long Depression of the 1870s, the railroads found they had over-invested in transportation capacity. Speculating on future growth and the returns on land development, they collectively built more rail lines than could be put to productive use. The result was a huge financial correction in which the private-sector railroads consolidated their routes, down-sized their unproductive infrastructure and put their reserve capacity into endeavors that had a higher rate of return. This was a painful, but necessary, correction.
\nThe parallels to 2011 are obvious. We’ve built out the interstate highway system as it was originally envisioned \u2014 although we opted to go through cities instead of around as planned \u2014 and then we built some more. We poured money in highways, county roads and local streets. We have so much transportation infrastructure \u2014 a huge proportion of it with no productivity \u2014 that every level of government is now choking on maintenance costs.
\n…
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\nRead more https:\/\/newurbannetwork.com\/news-opinion\/blogs\/charles-marohn\/15121\/asce-infrastructure-cult<\/a>oldId.20110823184958733<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Marohn, New Urban Network The American Society of Civil Engineers has just released a report that should be titled, "Pretending it is 1952." Like a broken record, ASCE is again painting a bleak picture of the future if American politicians \u2014 as if they need to be plied \u2014 won’t open up the checkbook … <\/p>\n

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