[onlooker]

Yeah, during collapse those fine exquisite places will make fine targets

[sparky]

.
The building of infrastructure and it's maintenance are a very serious subject
The us has some very deep issues with it's road , rail , water and electrical reticulation
this is obviously a federal concern .
while resurfacing during election times , like the great white whale
it seems to be ignored by the politicians beside pious statements and pork-barrel committees

[onlooker]

.
The building of infrastructure and it's maintenance are a very serious subject
The us has some very deep issues with it's road , rail , water and electrical reticulation
this is obviously a federal concern .
while resurfacing during election times , like the great white whale
it seems to be ignored by the politicians beside pious statements and pork-barrel committees

Sparky like many things nowadays we give priority to the immediate and postpone addressing potential future problems. That always is evident given a favorable cost/immediate benefit ratio. It is more evident now because of shortfalls in budgets.
The infrastructure is serious because it is becoming a problem now rather than in the future

[sparky]

.
one of the great weakness of democracy is the election cycle ,
if it's too long it institutionalize the incumbents into a virtual autocracy twisting the public service into their minions
if it's too short , the permanent election mode favor hot air rhetoric while the deep state take over

what is the right mix ?
.....I don't know ....I don't know

[Tanada]

.
The building of infrastructure and it's maintenance are a very serious subject
The us has some very deep issues with it's road , rail , water and electrical reticulation
this is obviously a federal concern .
while resurfacing during election times , like the great white whale
it seems to be ignored by the politicians beside pious statements and pork-barrel committees

Actually in the USA Rail and electrical systems are almost totally privately owned and maintained, local water systems are generally city government functions and large water projects are mostly state run projects like the Oroville Dam in California. Local roads are city or county purview and the state handles long distance internal road networks. In point of fact the only one of those four systems you named that is a Federal responsibility is the Interstate Highway system.

[Cog]

Once they are built, interstate highways are owned and maintained by the states that they pass through. The federal government does have certain standards that must be adhered to for new construction.

[Newfie]

I would like to see new infrastructure spending limited (mostly) to repair/replace existing systems. NO NEW HIGHWAYS. We need to learn to live with and care for what we have. We need to slow/stop growth. It's like having a house, you build a fancy new addition but the main house roof leaks.

I'd also like to see most mass transit made free to all riders. Kinda stupid, we spend billions for a system to haul people then price them out of the market.

[Tanada]

I would like to see new infrastructure spending limited (mostly) to repair/replace existing systems. NO NEW HIGHWAYS. We need to learn to live with and care for what we have. We need to slow/stop growth. It's like having a house, you build a fancy new addition but the main house roof leaks.

I'd also like to see most mass transit made free to all riders. Kinda stupid, we spend billions for a system to haul people then price them out of the market.

You use the media/left catch phrase and say 'mass transit made free' but what you actually mean is 'mass transit fully funded by taxpayers'. I don't have a problem with the concept of mass transit being a public responsibility like roads and street lights, but I do object to the miss use of the word 'free' all over the place. Nothing is free, not even your air and water come without costs to keep them viable for consumption especially in an urban environment. Pollution controls and quality standards enforcement are very real expenses.

It all boils down to, how big is the city government budget and just what services do they have to pay for out of that budget? Make taxes too high and those who can move away. Make vital services too low a priority and the residents suffer and if possible again, move away. Police/Fire/EMT need to be top priorities because if you are not safe nothing else much matters. After that infrastructure like roads, bridges and building inspections are vital to get good like food in and out of the city. Throw in potable water supply and sewage treatment, then add in solid waste removal (Have you seen what happens in large cities when garbage workers go on strike???). All of these really vital requirements take up a LOT of cash flow. Now take a city like Detroit, MI that is 300 years plus old and compare it to Phoenix, AZ. In Detroit most of the streets and water and sewer and even street lighting electrical grid are a CENTURY old or in many cases older. There are still sections of the Detroit water main system that were installed in the 1800's! Most of the Street Light electrical system dates from the 1920's!!! The streets go all the way back to cobble stone and brick from the 1700's in the oldest parts of the city. Now compare that to Phoenix, AZ. Phoenix was founded in 1868 and was a relatively small town right through the Great Depression ended with World War II. The start of the second world war caused rapid growth to kick off and the city is now in the top ten or fifteen in size in the USA. The infrastructure of water and sewer and electrical grid and so on and so forth is almost all of post World War II first construction.

This means that while Detroit had infrastructure for a million people in 1930 Phoenix only had infrastructure for 30,000. While Detroit's population was pretty stagnant from 1950-1970 Phoenix was rapidly growing and building new infrastructure from new materials. In the 1970's Detroit hiked taxes sky high to try and replace some of their very old infrastructure, plus a lot of graft and corruption. This lead to 'white flight' which is a misnomer because the affluent black members of the population fled at least as eagerly as the white residents. This created a downward spiral where the city government kept raising taxes and this in turn caused more residents to move away which lead to declining revenues which lead to higher tax rates again from the city council. During this same era the city of Phoenix was growing like a well fertilized well watered tree, sending roots and branches out in new directions with new streets and new sewer/water/electric lines and from the 1970's a reputation as an ideal location for elderly folks to retire. Because Phoenix was growing rapidly their tax base was constantly growing without need to raise taxes. This friendly tax environment encouraged more people and more businesses to move in.

The problem is of course, all that stuff built in Phoenix from 1950-2000 is now aging infrastructure just like the vast majority of Detroit has. Growth has slowed substantially because it now takes more and more of the budget to fix or replace the older infrastructure of the city and the 'new city' of Phoenix is not nearly so new any longer. It has become a mature city with mature city problems of an enormous infrastructure that requires constant maintenance. The city council in Phoenix now faces the exact same dilemma that destroyed most of the cities east of the Mississippi like Detroit and Chicago and Cleveland and Philadelphia. If they raise taxes to take care of all the basic necessities the people who can move away do. If they don't take care of the basic necessities again the people who can move away do so. It is the classic Catch 22, so long as it is cheaper to live outside the city because of tax rates inside the city and cheap fuel costs to travel to the city at need people choose what is in their own financial best interests, and move away. All those suburbs that sprang up around Detroit in the 1970-2000 period are juts like Phoenix, they built a ton of infrastructure out of farmland during that thirty year boom period when they had ow taxes because building new in open land is always cheaper than tearing up an existing street to replace something that is broken. Super cheap vehicle fuel made this price disparity between big city taxes and small suburban taxes extremely attractive to everyone with a job good enough to support a car lifestyle.

Sadly for those who never consider long term consequences, whether it is Phoenix or Romulus, Michigan (Detroit suburb) the days when unlimited growth kept the coffers full has passed and now the days of consequences are arriving. That infrastructure can not repair itself, you have to dedicate workers and materials and funds to that process. As time goes on the pattern follows a sigmoid function, at the start everything is cheap and easy. Then there is the period of change over when more and more of the budget shifts to repair and replace existing infrastructure instead of building new. Finally in a fully mature city the budget reaches the point where repair and replace balanced decay and damage and the budget for the process stabilizes with the rate of inflation.

[Newfie]

Don't disagree with anything there Tanada. Mass transit is not free to the tax payer. It is a tax payers asset that is poorly used and managed. Here is some of my logic. Something between 20 and 30 percent of the farebix take goes just to support the fare collection process. Farebox receipts don't cover the cost of operating the system, sometimes less than 50%. System operating and maintence costs are mostly not driven by ridership.

So here is an asset we have paid for. Why not get the maximum benefit from that asset? How do we get that benefit? I suggest that we should encourage folks to use it as much as possible. Make it an economic engine, use it to make it easier for folks to get to work, to get to shopping, to make and spend money. If running the system at 100% capacity dosent cost (much) more than running at some small fraction the run it and get as much benefit from the investment as you can. The farebox, after taking out its own costs, contributes relatively little to the operation. But the relatively high cost of ridership disuse centigrade folks from using the system.

We lived in Philly over 30 years and I very rarely rode the system. It was too expensive for the hassle. Lests say we wanted to go to the train station. It would cost us EACH about $2.50 for a ticket. That $5 to get there. But then we have to wait a long time and make transfers etc. or I could hire a cab for $7.50 and get door to door service. In the meantime I see busses running, off peak with 2 - 4 riders.

We had a baby sitter through a service. So she was straight up legit. Older lady, very respectable, determined to take no handouts. I got talking to her. She would work a 5 hour shift, it's what we needed. She got minimum wage and had all the withholding taxes. So her take home is what? $25 for a 5 hour shift? But her commute, with 2 busses and the subway was about 1-1/2 hour EACH way. For that she was paying, with transfers, about $6 in transport,mound trip. Bottom line was under $20 pocket for an 8 hour shift. Would you do that? I wouldn't.

Now she is not typical but she's not that far off either. We bitch and moan about folks not working, not wanting jobs. We complain about spending money on transit and then no one uses it, or only lightly. For follow at the bottom of the ladder the transit fares are a dissentive.

So why do we run those 40 passenger busses mostly empty 8 or more hours a day? How can we make that investment make us more money through increased sales tax and employment tax? That's where I'm going.

[Cog]

Tax me so that those less well off can ride for free? How about NO?

Plus you won't allow me to conceal carry on any transit system that I know of, even in red states. So you have disarmed me and expect to ride with the criminal class who ride for free.

[Newfie]

Well you already bought it so that's tax money spent. And your taxes are paying welfare already.

What I'm arguing for is how to make the most of our SOENT money and how to do things efficiently.

Don't be so dogmatic. Think about how to make the system work better, for YOU. Think outside the box. Think like Trump.

[Subjectivist]

A few years ago a couple of the Toledo suburbs rebelled against the Toledo Transit system because they did a lousy job serving the needs of the suburbs and still charged full price even though every bus had a capacity of 80 and rarely exceeded 20 riders. They actually calculated the suburban system could hire five or six cabbies who could pick up and drop off the bus riders for less money that they were paying for TARTA. The case eventually yave to go to the state legislature because Toledo had written the contracts in such a way that suburbs could opt in with a public vote, but could only opt out with permission from TARTA, which was never going to give permission.

[Tanada]

I went to post this morning and couldn't log on for several hours so this is slightly old news by now.

I am, and have always been, an advocate for better infrastructure across all levels. It is one of the few things I believe is actually a Government responsibility and it is sadly one that has been poorly preformed for the last 50 years.

However I have now heard both expected Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Trump talking the talk on highly funding infrastructure upgrades nation wide. If they actually carry through wit their statements it really will be a better day for middle America!

President Trump and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi insisted Wednesday that they can find areas of cooperation on infrastructure spending and health care, vowing to play nice just one day after voters split control of Washington between the two parties.

Democrats were still waiting to hear how big their House majority would be, while Republicans were eyeing results in several Senate races that will determine how much they grow their numbers in the upper chamber. But it wasn’t clear that either party emerged with a clear mandate, save for Democrats claiming the country wants to see them conduct oversight on Mr. Trump.

The president countered that Democrats can choose to work on issues together, or they can pursue their lengthy list of investigations against the administration, but they cannot do both.

“If that happens then we’re going to do the same thing and government comes to a halt,” the president said at a press conference, taking stock of the election results.

Several major races are still pending.

Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams, trailing in Georgia’s governor’s race, has vowed to send it into overtime, trying to orchestrate a runoff by pushing Republican Brian Kemp’s share of the vote under the 50 percent threshold.

In Florida, GOP candidate Rick Scott appears to have defeated Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, but the race may end up in an automatic recount.

And hundreds of thousands of ballots were still being counted in Arizona, where the GOP is trying to hang onto a seat. Republican Rep. Martha McSalley held a slim lead over Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat.

When the Florida and Arizona Senate races are decided, Republicans will have from 52 to 54 seats.

In the House, Democrats will hold at least 222 seats to Republicans’ 196. The remaining 17 races were too close to project a winner Wednesday evening.

Whatever the final tally, Democrats’ majority will be slim enough that they’ll have to worry about defectors on both the right and left wings of their party.

Mr. Trump said he almost prefers it this way, with Democrats in control rather than a slim GOP lead.

“It really could be a beautiful, bipartisan type of situation. If we won by one or two or three or four or five, that wouldn’t happen, and the closer it is, the worse it is,” he said. “This way, they’ll come to me, we’ll negotiate, maybe we’ll make a deal, maybe we won’t, that’s possible.”

Mrs. Pelosi, too, offer grand visions of deals.

“We’re not going for the lowest common denominator, we’re going for the boldest common denominator,” she said at her own press conference.

She said Democrats aren’t itching for fights, but will use Congress’s oversight powers judiciously to expose wrongdoing within the administration. She batted aside questions about specific looming fights, such as Mr. Trump’s demand for more money for his border wall.

Asked why she was confident she could achieve bipartisanship, she quoted civil rights icon Martin Luther King and former President Ronald Reagan as inspiration.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader who will have to forge a partnership with Mrs. Pelosi, said they worked together when they were both senior members of foreign operations appropriations subcommittees in their respective chambers.

He said infrastructure spending will be an area of potential cooperation.

But he said the Senate’s chief priority will be confirming Mr. Trump’s nominees, including judicial picks. He said that should be easier because without agreement on big priorities, the Senate won’t be spending much time on House-passed legislation.

“I don’t think we’ll have any trouble finding time to do nominations,” he told reporters.

Neither side in Congress seemed enthusiastic about the chances for an immigration deal — though Mr. Trump said once the courts have issued a final ruling on the Obama-era DACA deportation amnesty, he thinks a deal for illegal immigrant “Dreamers” could be quickly reached.

But Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer sounded a dissonant note, calling Mr. Trump a “poor negotiator” and suggesting Congress works better when the president butts out.

He said that holds true for the spending bills Congress must still negotiate by early December.

“I would hope that the president wouldn’t interfere, and we could get something good done,” the New York Democrat said.

Mr. Schumer’s position as leader appears safe despite having lost seats in his first election in charge.

He said he was waiting on the Florida results and possible recount, and said Arizona is “not close to over” with perhaps 600,000 ballots still outstanding.

“We’ve lost one, two, three seats tops,” he said.

Three incumbent Democrats definitely did lose — Sens. Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, Joe Donnelly in Indiana and Claire McCaskill in Missouri. Meanwhile, one sitting Republican, Sen. Dean Heller in Nevada, was ousted.

Republicans had hoped for another pickup in Montana but Sen. Jon Tester claimed victory Wednesday. Ousting the two-term Democrat had been a personal quest for Mr. Trump.

A Mississippi U.S. Senate seat held by Republicans is going to a runoff, but analysts predict the GOP will have little difficulty winning in one of the nation’s most conservative states.

Among governorships, Democrats netted seven, including big states such as Michigan and Illinois and Wisconsin, where incumbent Gov. Scott Walker was ousted after two terms.

But Republicans held onto governor’s mansions in Ohio and Florida, fending off challenges from strong left-wingers.

In the House, Democrats made significant gains in Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey and New York.

Some 17 races were still being contested, including a large swath in California. The Democratic candidate was leading in seven races and the Republican was ahead in 10.

LINKY