US infrastructure reconstruction

[Darth_Yuthura]

Agreed, but I'd consider that part of maintenance. Replacing what makes no fiscal sense to repair is part of maintenance, no?

 

I wouldn't agree with that. Maintenance involves keeping something up to code after it has been built. Replacing means tearing something down and building something to take its place. Despite what may be said about costing more to keep a system operating than replacing it is literally wrong.

 

If you were comparing the cost of upkeep for an old bridge to the price of a new one, it would be astronomically smaller. Most would rather not have to choke up a huge sum of money to build a new bridge when the one they have works well enough. The upkeep for a new bridge would be smaller than that of an old one, but one must come up with the funding to build the new one first. (some bridges are in the billions) And when you have a funding deficit, you can't exactly afford to take on another giant project that isn't a necessity. You can use a bridge past its lifespan if you are willing to pay extra for keeping it up. Only in the long run would a new bridge make financial sense, but people need short-term benefits in today's economy to survive.

 

I understand the economic benefits to building a new bridge that is designed to be less expensive to maintain, but often these kind of expenditures are not made until the funding for such massive projects are available or an old bridge is expected to collapse at any time.

[JediAthos]

I was watching a program on the Autobahn on the history channel today. I wonder if our highway system went to a similar model if it wouldn't be as costly to maintain. The Germans seem to do a fantastic job maintaining the Autobahn based on what I saw on the documentary.

[Web Rider]

I was watching a program on the Autobahn on the history channel today. I wonder if our highway system went to a similar model if it wouldn't be as costly to maintain. The Germans seem to do a fantastic job maintaining the Autobahn based on what I saw on the documentary.

 

The Germans also have drastically higher corporate and individual taxes.

 

Agreed, but I'd consider that part of maintenance. Replacing what makes no fiscal sense to repair is part of maintenance, no?

Maintenance of the entire system perhaps, but not of the individual structure. If you tear a bridge down and put up a new one, that's not maintenance of that bridge.

[Darth Avlectus]

The Germans also have drastically higher corporate and individual taxes.

Ouch!

 

Maintenance of the entire system perhaps, but not of the individual structure. If you tear a bridge down and put up a new one, that's not maintenance of that bridge.

 

Well...if it simply isn't feasible to repair, nixing and replacing would make sense, at least I'd think it would...just saying. But true, if you want to get technical, no replacement is not maintenance of the bridge. But taking care of the bridge area might be seen as maintenance for the town or city on a broader scheme. At least that's what I got from Bimmerman's statements.

 

Either case, it is what it is.

[Darth_Yuthura]

To put it short: A significant number of systems within the US infrastructure are failing because there is not enough money generated from taxes to keep them up to code. The moment you speak of raising taxes, you start getting protests; but they are necessary in order to keep the state operating.

 

There is another solution to raising taxes to such an extreme level, but it's already been heard and rejected... higher population density. When you share utilities, you reduce costs per capita. When you have more people living in a smaller area, you can increase the efficiency of public services as well. By having a smaller urban footprint, you have fewer pipes, power lines, roads, sewers. Having more people in a smaller area allows for less money to be spent of squad cars, school buses, garbage trucks, and a greater proportion of tax money to be spent on maintaining a smaller urban footprint. (I won't comment any further, as it has already been addressed elsewhere)

[Trench]

To put it short: A significant number of systems within the US infrastructure are failing because there is not enough money generated from taxes to keep them up to code. The moment you speak of raising taxes, you start getting protests; but they are necessary in order to keep the state operating.

 

Well if you'd ever visited my neck of the country, you'd disagree. Taxes out here are murder, especially when you live on more than a couple of acres like myself, and pretty much everyone out here does. Lets see how you feel when taxes are threatening to force you out of your home.

[JediAthos]

To put it short: A significant number of systems within the US infrastructure are failing because there is not enough money generated from taxes to keep them up to code. The moment you speak of raising taxes, you start getting protests; but they are necessary in order to keep the state operating.

 

There is another solution to raising taxes to such an extreme level, but it's already been heard and rejected... higher population density. When you share utilities, you reduce costs per capita. When you have more people living in a smaller area, you can increase the efficiency of public services as well. By having a smaller urban footprint, you have fewer pipes, power lines, roads, sewers. Having more people in a smaller area allows for less money to be spent of squad cars, school buses, garbage trucks, and a greater proportion of tax money to be spent on maintaining a smaller urban footprint. (I won't comment any further, as it has already been addressed elsewhere)

 

 

Yes, yes, we've been there discussed that...but for the sake of the thread that goes back to redoing the system, undoing over 200 years of infrastructure, abolishing whole towns, small cities etc...to move people into a smaller area. Perhaps any new communities could be based on such ideas, but attempting to redo the current system to conform to such ideals is impractical and is probably not going to happen.

[Jae Onasi]

A significant number of systems within the US infrastructure are failing because there is not enough money generated from taxes to keep them up to code.

Well, to be fair, 'the code' has gotten stricter with time as engineering advances have occurred. What is considered 'failing code' now may not have been failing 10 years ago when the code was different.

[Darth_Yuthura]

Well, to be fair, 'the code' has gotten stricter with time as engineering advances have occurred. What is considered 'failing code' now may not have been failing 10 years ago when the code was different.

 

That likely applies to new construction, but anything old will only become more dilapidated and likely to collapse than it was forty years ago. There are a few exceptions, but the majority of systems that haven't been renovated will only be more likely to fail than when they were new.

 

Well if you'd ever visited my neck of the country' date=' you'd disagree. Taxes out here are murder, especially when you live on more than a couple of acres like myself, and pretty much everyone out here does. Lets see how you feel when taxes are threatening to force you out of your home.[/quote']

 

I don't know what you were getting at with this, but if taxes are exceptionally high where you are and the roads are just as shabby, then clearly there is not enough tax money to provide for the existing infrastructure. Otherwise your tax dollars are being siphoned elsewhere.

[Web Rider]

That likely applies to new construction, but anything old will only become more dilapidated and likely to collapse than it was forty years ago. There are a few exceptions, but the majority of systems that haven't been renovated will only be more likely to fail than when they were new.

Changes in code apply to all public structures. See above for my mention of a local dam. The change in codes made the dam fall into the "immediate danger" zone, but nothing had fundamentally changed about the dam. However, any repairs made to it must be made to current code standards, not 1959 standards.

 

 

 

I don't know what you were getting at with this, but if taxes are exceptionally high where you are and the roads are just as shabby, then clearly there is not enough tax money to provide for the existing infrastructure. Otherwise your tax dollars are being siphoned elsewhere.

Where property taxes go depend on the State in question. They don't generally go to road maintainence, that generally comes from registration costs.

[Darth_Yuthura]

Where property taxes go depend on the State in question. They don't generally go to road maintainence, that generally comes from registration costs.

 

The point was that maintaining an infrastructure of pipelines, roads, power lines, rail networks, and public services is expensive. It gets more expensive the wider it has to stretch, or in some cases the higher into the sky you reach. This funding has to come from somewhere and many people don't realize that high taxes are the result of the resources you need to keep everything operating. Unless federal money is being squandered elsewhere, higher taxes come with more expensive upkeep costs. Lower taxes often result in a detraction from the quality of the education system, police coverage, and fire departments.

 

Also if the standards for transportation and utilities is increasing as time progresses... 'updating the code' makes it even more expensive to plan out and construct new systems. This is another cost that has to be taken into consideration. Some already existing systems (Such as the Boston Freeway) have to be replaced because they have exceeded their original capacity and couldn't simply be expanded. It makes no sense to destroy something that works fine enough just because it couldn't handle anticipated future capacity.

 

This was a very general statement, so I will elaborate if another has an objection to it.

[Bimmerman]

With respect, it doesn't sound like you know a whole lot about property, income, gas, and other taxes. The gas tax is the chief contributor to infrastructure funding. Try and raise that and the public at large will basically crucify any politician who advocates for it.

 

As for high tax areas with poor roads.....this happens way more often than you'd think. Raising taxes more is not the answer. There is a very real threat of being punitively taxed to the point of losing your home, and therefore taxes should be...raised? I don't understand that line of thought at all.

 

The reason the US infrastructure isn't fantastic is that it is not the federal government's responsibilty to keep it that way, nor is it the state government's. It is the onus of each community to take care of their municipal infrastructure, with the county taking care of regional highways and associated bits. Raising taxes is never the answer, cutting useless spending elsewhere or re-prioritizing is.

 

And please, no more talk of condensing people in smaller areas. That logic didn't fly in the suburban thread, and it got closed when you refused to listen to what people were saying (as well as blatantly making things up). The benefit of reduced infrastructure extent is absolutely minimized or even negated due to the increased number of travelers and users. That puts a much greater strain on the roadways, bridges, pipes, etc-- enough to make it about equal in maintenance cost for inner city vs suburban/rural. Thus...it doesn't matter where people live, and we don't need to keep hearing rehashed arguments for it.

[Darth_Yuthura]

The reason the US infrastructure isn't fantastic is that it is not the federal government's responsibilty to keep it that way, nor is it the state government's. It is the onus of each community to take care of their municipal infrastructure, with the county taking care of regional highways and associated bits. Raising taxes is never the answer, cutting useless spending elsewhere or re-prioritizing is.

 

What 'useless' spending are you referring to?

[JediAthos]

Useless spending...the U.S. government is famous for it...pork barrel projects, pet projects, things that could wait but get attached to important legislation by representatives so they can accomplish their personal goals. It happens at all levels of government in the U.S.

[Darth_Yuthura]

I was hoping for something more specific. And I was really asking for where municipal level resources are squandered, not federal funding.

[Web Rider]

Wasn't referring to property taxes.

 

Yes, however the person you were responding to stated that they had higher taxes for more property, that's property taxes.

[Darth_Yuthura]

Alright. Property taxes don't correlate to what it costs to keep a piece of property linked to a road, provided sanitation service, or to be hooked up to the water works. Often you have development that costs more to upkeep than is yielded from property taxes.

 

http://www.populareconomics.com/documents/FF/FF12-19-05.pdf

 

A short reading: popular economics

 

Example: Prince William County Virginia has among the highest property tax rates around Metropolitan DC, yet it loses an average of $1,200 per house each year providing for the services.

 

Here are sites directed at the impacts of sprawl on local services by providing subsidies for many pieces of property in suburban areas. If it costs more to maintain a house than it returns from taxes, then where's the funding going to come from?

 

http://www.iit.edu/~karagian/smart01/

 

This shows the effects of overextending utilities and highways cositng more and becoming more difficult to maintain in the suburbs of Chicago than those in the inner city. The infrastructure of the downtown does cost more than any other location in the metropolitan area, but that is taking into consideration that many of the systems, transportation especially, have to not only handle its own demands, but act as a hub for the rest of the city.

 

So maybe it would be better to say that the further away from any system hub you get, the more costly it is to maintain links. It doesn't mean you HAVE to densify; you just should be willing to pay for your own links and not be subsidized for any less than what it takes to maintain those links.

 

You either pay additional taxes, iron out the inefficiencies of the links you have, or those links will fail when they don't get the funding they need to be maintained properly.

 

http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03october/october03corp1.html

http://www.uwm.edu/~frankn/Sprawl_Frank.htm

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=2686

[JediAthos]

I was hoping for something more specific. And I was really asking for where municipal level resources are squandered, not federal funding.

 

I did some googling and found a lot of accusations of municipal waste...stadiums paid for with tax money etc...but one thing to keep in mind is that many state roads are subsidized by federal funding and city roads are subsidized by state funding etc....

[Web Rider]

Alright. Property taxes don't correlate to what it costs to keep a piece of property linked to a road, provided sanitation service, or to be hooked up to the water works. Often you have development that costs more to upkeep than is yielded from property taxes.

 

Of course not, because that's not how property taxes are done. Even if I have my own wells, my own septic, and my own power, I could still pay more property tax than my neighbor who is connected to the system because I have more land. The value of the land is the basis for property tax. Land value is based on the real estate market. Hence folks in Beverly Hills can still pay more, even living in a denser area and using more utilities, than me in the boonies.

[Darth_Yuthura]

The value of the land is the basis for property tax. Land value is based on the real estate market. Hence folks in Beverly Hills can still pay more, even living in a denser area and using more utilities, than me in the boonies.

 

Exactly. So if one could set property taxes based on land value alone, it would only be a matter of time before you end up with an ever more expensive infrastructure and no way to pay for it. Don't forget that property taxes are the primary source of funding for municipal sanitation, police upkeep, education, fire department, and provision of public spaces. Without a regulated source of sustainable income, it was only a matter of time before you have more upkeep costs than you have income.

 

Portland overcame this to a large extent because it planned its future development to ensure it would maintain sustainable development. Another major obstacle with property taxes involves anticipated urban expansion raising the price of vacant land more than it normally would sell for; but there are often times when the consequences of this leads to poor urban planning, based on increasing the value of land the most and disregarding how it would keep its value after being built.

 

Some communities are now full of empty-nesters, where education demands are not so high anymore. Many suburbs of the early 50's are becoming dilapidated because the houses were so cheaply built. As these 'ghetto' zones (as one person called them) undergo gentrification, you will start to get a much more desirable and sustainable urban development than what originally was built.

[Jae Onasi]

If you spend more than you take in as a local gov''t, you go broke. What towns do is just raise taxes--property taxes or county sales taxes, or find some other source of revenue. The other alternative is to cut services. They don't get to run a deficit to the degree California, Illinois, or the US do.

[Darth_Yuthura]

And please, no more talk of condensing people in smaller areas. That logic didn't fly in the suburban thread, and it got closed when you refused to listen to what people were saying (as well as blatantly making things up). The benefit of reduced infrastructure extent is absolutely minimized or even negated due to the increased number of travelers and users. That puts a much greater strain on the roadways, bridges, pipes, etc-- enough to make it about equal in maintenance cost for inner city vs suburban/rural. Thus...it doesn't matter where people live, and we don't need to keep hearing rehashed arguments for it.

 

With all due respect, I think you are wrong.

 

The flaw in the suburban debate was preference: the majority of Americans wanted privacy. That however did not counter my logic that a city with a smaller urban footprint was more efficient and easier to maintain.

 

With population density, you can reduce the distance that people and resources have to travel to reach their destinations. If you have a city with the same population as Atlanta, but its urban footprint is just 15 miles from the CBD to the outermost boarder, there will be less wear per capita upon the roads than Atlanta. In Atlanta, many people drive over 40 miles per day. That represents much more wear exerted upon roads and bridges overall than the first city. There are more roads in Atlanta, yes; but that also means more roads that have to be paid for as well. This cannot possibly compare to the first city.

 

You also made a mistake: not 'more travelers,' 'more traffic.' There is a difference. Having more people in a smaller area would mean more cars on fewer roads at any one time, but the number of travelers would not change one way or another.

 

You do have a point that there would be more traffic operating on fewer roads, but because the driving distance would be reduced, so would be the wear placed upon the roads. To counter this, mass transit could, and often is demanded for a city like this to function. In addition to this, it is better to have roads used more to their fullest capacity than not. Open roads represent wasted time, space, and money; but replacing them more frequently is better than doing it less frequently for less-used streets. The problem often comes not with replacing the roads themselves, but when you have fractured concrete that constantly needs to be patched. It's better to minimize the times that has to be done, so it's better to have roads to their maximum capacity more often than not. (I don't mean congested though)

 

The same thing goes with utilities. If you have to supply water to a suburb ten miles away, you have to ensure that pipelines not only can handle the local demands, but they must also be able to handle the demands of everything leading to that suburb. If you theoretically moved that suburb five miles closer, that’s five miles’ less pipe than you needed before. And then that's less to have to maintain. To provide for additional demand, you can upgrade the pipe and capacity increases at a greater rate than price and maintenance.

 

Sewers are more effective when they are much wider and with thicker walls, so it makes more sense to build larger sewers for denser communities than those that are less than 2 meters in diameter and dispersed in some cities.

[Jae Onasi]

That's assuming that you have to build the infrastructure from the center of the city to the suburbs, and that's not always the case. My town could arguably be called a suburb, but it has its own coal burning power plant and doesn't depend on the Chicago or Milwaukee grids. It has its own water treatment plants so it doesn't depend on the sewers of either of those major cities either.

 

Also, it doesn't matter how closely packed you have everything. If you have thousands of cars going over a bridge every hour of every day of every year, whether or not it's in the city or suburbs, it's going to need maintenance. Good luck doing construction on the interstates in the middle of Chicago. I've driven on the Dan Ryan expressway while it was undergoing its major reconstruction work, and on the Edens as well. The amount of traffic disruption and increases in travel times were staggering, because there was no other place to put all the people when they were already squashed together. The side streets and arteries couldn't handle the same traffic, and even with the increase number of public transportation routes added in the area (more buses and L-trains), they couldn't keep up. The travel times were still astounding. In rural or suburban areas, there's room to shift people over to other roads without so much disruption.

 

Please define 'many suburbs of the '50's are becoming dilapidated'. Do you have numbers to support this? Don't you think that a lot of that has to do with owners taking care of their property?

 

I grew up in a house that was built in the 50's. I pass by it on a regular basis and it still looks great, as does the rest of the neighborhood around it. My home was built in '29, and the houses around it and in our neighborhood are being well maintained. Even the homes in the more 'inner city' part of our town are fine so long as the owners maintain them properly, and they're over 100 years old. It all depends on how people take care of their homes.

[Darth_Yuthura]

Good luck doing construction on the interstates in the middle of Chicago. I've driven on the Dan Ryan expressway while it was undergoing its major reconstruction work, and on the Edens as well. The amount of traffic disruption and increases in travel times were staggering, because there was no other place to put all the people when they were already squashed together. The side streets and arteries couldn't handle the same traffic, and even with the increase number of public transportation routes added in the area (more buses and L-trains), they couldn't keep up. The travel times were still astounding. In rural or suburban areas, there's room to shift people over to other roads without so much disruption.

 

The problem you speak of is in regards to alternate routes. It can be, and often is, just as bad in rural areas as in urban landscapes. The problem I have with freeways is that they can only deposit and receive traffic at certain choke points. If you were to have an accident that blocked a freeway in one direction, it would essentially not permit an alternate route unless you were to reach the next choke point (onramp) take back roads, bypass the jam, and get back on the next onramp to resume the flow.

 

I have an instance where a critical juncture in a rural area was severed due to repairs. Because I was entering Madison from a rural location, the only route I had to reaching my specific destination involved going an additional five miles through urban landscape when I normally would only have gone through just one. The problem with this location for me that it is on the opposite side of, but not connected to a major interstate and that road was the only place within 4 miles that provided a path to the opposite side of that interstate.

 

My home was built in '29, and the houses around it and in our neighborhood are being well maintained. Even the homes in the more 'inner city' part of our town are fine so long as the owners maintain them properly, and they're over 100 years old. It all depends on how people take care of their homes.

 

So if your old home was built before WWII, then I am not surprised it's in pristine condition. Such neighborhoods were not mass produced and are likely to be in better shape than those that are only 40 years old. It has to do with how well-built a neighborhood was and what resources were used in the first place. If you want to use cheaper materials, then you should prepare to replace it more often; most haven't.

[Darth_Yuthura]

I've just been in Madison, WI and observing the university taking down some old structures from the 1950's and 60's, but leaving up many that are much older than that. How does that make sense?

 

Well when I began to look at some of the buildings that are ready to be demolished and compared them to some of the older halls that are expected to remain for decades to come, I realized that even the architecture of post WWII buildings are based on cheap and easy designs. The infrastructure problem isn't limited solely to cheap and easy city-wide design, but it goes right down to building principles that had altered during the post WWII decades.

 

This isn't just an issue limited to UW Madison, as I've seen the same thing in a number of other universities... cheap buildings constructed about 50 years ago showing their age while the majority of the more historic buildings lasting decades longer before they are to be replaced. I've seen buildings closing on a hundred years old being replaced AFTER those that have only been constructed much more recently. And these are not all historic sites, although some are; so that wouldn't explain why so many obsolete buildings are not replaced first.

 

Is this just me, or do others notice this tendency to replace newer, cheaper things more often than they do with ancient structures? If they weren't built to last, it would give some indication as to whether or not they were worth the effort to build them so cheap in the first place.