The Duke on Infrastructre

[underground]

Duke?s Place: Michael Dukakis on How to Fix America

Posted on Monday February 2nd by Jebediah Reed


It?s hard not to have the sense that after twenty years of relative obscurity?or at least being thought of primarily as a guy who looks stupid in a tank gunner helmet?Michael Dukakis is poised for a renaissance. The trajectory of Al Gore could be instructive: eggheaded Dem becomes media laughing stock in the course of losing to a man named Bush but gets his mojo back as an opinion leader.
Dukakis certainly deserves to be an important voice in the national debate about how to rebuild our roads and rail. He has a black belt in transportation policy and as governor of Massachusetts had an impressive record of completing large public works projects on time and on budget.
Curious about the Duke?s thoughts on the stimulus bill and the larger project of rebuilding America?s infrastructure, we reached him recently at UCLA, where he?s teaching this semester. He talks about why the U.S. can?t build big things anymore, what he thinks about when he?s stuck in L.A. traffic, and what America would be like if he?d been elected back in ?88.

Setting aside modesty, if you?d beaten ?Poppy? Bush would we be facing an infrastructure crisis now?
Oh Christ, we?d have been at this thing all guns blazing.

You mean, for instance, we?d now have a halfway decent passenger rail system in the U.S.?
Are you kidding me? If I?d served as president for eight years? I certainly think so.

You backed Obama in the primaries. He?s obviously made infrastructure investment a priority. What should he be doing to get it right?
I must say, he has impressed me more and more. The guy looks and sounds like a president. But, remember, it?s generally the state and local governments that do infrastructure in this country. Which means the Obama administration is going to have to kick a lot of people in the fanny to get moving with this stuff and to give us a little more of the spirit of the transcontinental railroad. What his transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, should really do is bring in the mayors and governors, sit them down with the president and say, ?Guys, we?re not fooling around. We want to see hundreds of people working out there. If you?ve got work them on weekends, do it. We want projects done and done quickly and on budget.?

There?s a lot of grumbling from progressives that Obama is wasting an opportunity with the stimulus by trying to appease Republicans in the House and Senate. As a Democrat, do you think he?s setting himself up as too much of a compromiser?
I haven?t seen that since his inauguration. But if the Republicans are still talking about too much funding for infrastructure and ?Let?s cut taxes,? they?re back where they?ve been for the past eight years. They created this mess. McConnell and Boehner these guys are still singing the same tune. The one guy on television who keeps hitting them on this is Anderson Cooper. Every time they come on and say, ?We?re worried about too much borrowing,? he says, ?Now you?re worried?!? It?s great stuff.

In the current House version of the stimulus package Amtrak and intercity rail got knocked down from $5 billion proposed by the transportation committee to $1.1 billion. You served on the board at Amtrak for many years. Does this bode ill for the funding of passenger rail under Obama?
Well, does Amtrak have a billion dollars worth of shovel-ready projects? No, they really don?t. They?ve got $300-400 million. Could they get up to speed? Yeah, but they?ve got to get up to speed. Part of the problem is that we?ve so under invested in infrastructure for so long that our capacity to do this stuff has been weakened. That?s my concern generally with the infrastructure piece of the stimulus package.

There has been speculation that Larry Summers is behind the dramatic cuts to rail and transit in this version of the stimulus bill.
Well, I?d better talk to Summers. He was my economic guy in ?88. He credits me with getting him into public life. That?s where he met Clinton for the first time, on my campaign. But some of it might be skepticism on his part about being able to get this into the ground right away.

So was he right?
I don?t think the answer was to cut back. Instead, get the planners and engineers cracking. They need work too. And none of this two-year timeline stuff. Do it in six months and get it out to bid. There?s no reason you can?t do that. It?s all a function of people. Put enough people on these jobs and they?ll do the work. I suspect there are some unemployed architects and engineers out there. But you?ve got to force these people to meet deadlines. I mean there is very serious problem in this country. We?re taking forever to do public construction.

For example?
I could bore you for hours with examples. In Boston we?re in our fifth year of reconstructing Kenmore Square. It?s a joke. It?s absurd. They?re talking about six years to extend the Green line from Lechmere through Somerville to Tufts on existing railway. Chinese and Irish immigrants were laying four miles of railway a day in 1867. Out here in L.A. on the 405, they?re in their fourth year of building about five miles of an HOV lane. When you drive down the freeway ? and since you?re generally going seven miles an hour, you have time to look around ? if you might a handful of guys working, if you?re lucky.

So, to borrow a phrase, what?s our major malfunction?
Well, there?s a serious public construction management problem in this country. They give you estimates plus or minus 50 percent. Have you ever heard of anything like that? But there?s nothing inevitable about it, and it has everything to do with the kind of direction you?re getting from the public side. When I was governor, we had two big public works projects in Boston. One was the Harbor cleanup and one was the Big Dig. They were two of the biggest projects in history at the time. Both started out with same estimate ? around $4 billion. One came in on time and 25 percent under budget. That was the Harbor cleanup. We all know what happened with the other one.

What was the difference?
It was all about the competence of the people running the projects. If I may say, my guys were running the Harbor Cleanup and [former Gov. William] Weld?s guys were running the Big Dig. The reason that the Harbor cleanup was under budget was because the folks running the show in 1989-90 when I was still governor were smart enough to know that you want get out the bid when the economy is down and contractors are hungry. So they bid low. Fine! We accepted their bids. Two or three years later the economy revives and they start piling in with change orders [requesting more money]. Doug McDonald, who at the time was the head of the water resources authority, just sat there and laughed at them. So we got our project on time, under budget. On the Big Dig the change orders must have numbered in the thousands. It?s got everything to do with having people in place who are tough and smart. I had a guy a construction director at the MBTA who was one tough son-of-a-bitch. A career guy who?d been there and knew his stuff. The contractors were scared of him! Work came in on time, on budget, no foolin? around.

We seem to have gotten to a place where people have forgotten that large public works projects can happen in less than a half a lifetime.
In the 1950s we built the Calahan Tunnel in two years. What the hell are we doing now? Our friends in Europe and Asia still know how to build a tunnel. London has announced this cross-rail project, 25 miles from one side of city to the other. It will have a hugely positive effect on all kinds of things. It?s costing $1.5 billion per mile. Compare that to the estimates for tunnels in this country. The North-South rail link in Boston (which is important not only for the city but the whole Northeast corridor and all this America 2050 stuff that my friend Bob Yaro is talking about) is a mile long and it?s projected to cost $8 billion. For a mile. Nobody can tell me that the area below London is less complicated ? they?re going to be finding Roman ruins down there, for God?s sake.

The lesson?
The lesson is: when you don?t do it, you lose your capacity and expertise to do it and do it efficiently. We?ve got to get that back.

Link

 

[statler]

It was all about the competence of the people running the projects. If I may say, my guys were running the Harbor Cleanup and [former Gov. William] Weld?s guys were running the Big Dig.

 

[underground]

Also, apologies for the horrible spelling on the title.
The Duke just got me a little rev-ed up and I forgot what I was doing!

 

[briv]

I absolutely love what Dukakis is saying here. I sorta wish he'd run for governor again.

 

[blade_bltz]

What a baller. Can someone explain that dirtbag Larry Summers' anti-infrastructure attitude?

 

[statler]

I had a guy a construction director at the MBTA who was one tough son-of-a-bitch. A career guy who?d been there and knew his stuff. The contractors were scared of him! Work came in on time, on budget, no foolin? around.

This would be all the stuff we are already replacing today, correct?

 

[Lurker]

Everyone seems to forget that the state legislature, WHERE ALL THE SPENDING BILLS ORIGINATE, didn't allocate the money to do any local projects. The same goes for the Feds, how many decades has congress under bother parties (50 years of Dems, 10 of Republicans), ignored nearly century old crumbling infrastructure? The executive offices may not have made a sufficient issue out of infrastructure, however it is fault of the legislative bodies for not prioritizing spending and allocating funds to these projects.

I seem to recall the state's finances being run into the ground by Michael and the harbor cleanup was mostly handled by the Feds. The Duke is full of shit, it's very easy to talk about projects and spend money on them, it's another thing to get them done right. Considering what a weak leader Michael was, I bet the same politicians and crooked contractors would have pulled Big Dig level fiascoes on every single project he now gushes over.

"What a baller. Can someone explain that dirtbag Larry Summers' anti-infrastructure attitude?"

Larry Summers is against spending money on new things which aren't needed when repairs would suffice. Do you really want lots of roads, bridges, and oversized schools in the middle of nowhere which are built sloppily and then need to be maintained or staffed at greater expense in the future?

 

[PaulC]

When Dukakis was governor the fed was paying the bulk for waste treatment plants. This expired under him and so by the time the project got started it was paid for by the state with the occasional gift from the feds. I know the legislature takes blame on this too but Dukakis spends to much time on achieving consensus and not enough time on leading. That's why we have the one of the highest water rates in the country.

 

[czsz]

Do you really want lots of roads, bridges, and oversized schools in the middle of nowhere which are built sloppily and then need to be maintained or staffed at greater expense in the future?

I don't see where anyone is calling for new stuff to be built in the middle of nowhere. Most of the Dukakis interview concerns complex problems to alleviate infrastructure issues in the middle of cities.

 

[JohnAKeith]

Building a high-speed line between dense cities seems to make sense; the rest of the national rail line seems senseless, to me.

High speed should include:

LAX-SFO-Seattle LAX-San Diego LAX-Las Vegas BOS-NYC-DC NYC-Philadelphia

Any others?

 

[jenkins]

Building a high-speed line between dense cities seems to make sense; the rest of the national rail line seems senseless, to me.

High speed should include:

LAX-SFO-Seattle LAX-San Diego LAX-Las Vegas BOS-NYC-DC NYC-Philadelphia

Any others?

Plenty:

I think the biggest problem with the current national rail system is that it's laughably sparse. We might not be as densely populated as, say, Germany or Japan, but really, we're hardly as spread out as Amtrak would have you believe. Here's my proposal for Massachusetts:

Really, rail lines should be wherever there are people. It's how they do it in any country with a sane rail policy, like France, Germany, the UK, etc.

This even works in Australia:

Bear in mind that not only does this map only show the major express services (a full listing can be found from the website, http://www.railmaps.com.au/), but that Australia is about the same size as the US, only with about 7% of the population. Furthermore, Australia has absolutely no High-Speed trains, and plenty of airports to compete with. I'd say that all it takes to have a good rail network is the willingness to support one.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Bear in mind that not only does this map only show the major express services (a full listing can be found from the website, http://www.railpage.org.au/railmaps/), but that Australia is about the same size as the US, only with about 7% of the population. Furthermore, Australia has absolutely no High-Speed trains, and plenty of airports to compete with. I'd say that all it takes to have a good rail network is the willingness to support one.

And, apparently, they have the balls to build two railroads over the ocean!

 

[Lurker]

Learn from history or repeat the same mistakes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world/asia/06japan.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

February 6, 2009
Japan?s Big-Works Stimulus Is Lesson
By MARTIN FACKLER

HAMADA, Japan ? The Hamada Marine Bridge soars majestically over this small fishing harbor, so much larger than the squid boats anchored below that it seems out of place.

And it is not just the bridge. Two decades of generous public works spending have showered this city of 61,000 mostly graying residents with a highway, a two-lane bypass, a university, a prison, a children?s art museum, the Sun Village Hamada sports center, a bright red welcome center, a ski resort and an aquarium featuring three ring-blowing Beluga whales.

Nor is this remote port in western Japan unusual. Japan?s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world ? totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy ? while failing to generate a convincing recovery.

Now, as the Obama administration embarks on a similar path, proposing to spend more than $820 billion to stimulate the sagging American economy, many economists are taking a fresh look at Japan?s troubled experience. While Japan is not exactly comparable to the United States ? especially as a late developer with a history of heavy state investment in infrastructure ? economists say it can still offer important lessons about the pitfalls, and chances for success, of a stimulus package in an advanced economy.

In a nutshell, Japan?s experience suggests that infrastructure spending, while a blunt instrument, can help revive a developed economy, say many economists and one very important American official: Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who was a young financial attach? in Japan during the collapse and subsequent doldrums. One lesson Mr. Geithner has said he took away from that experience is that spending must come in quick, massive doses, and be continued until recovery takes firm root.

Moreover, it matters what gets built: Japan spent too much on increasingly wasteful roads and bridges, and not enough in areas like education and social services, which studies show deliver more bang for the buck than infrastructure spending.

?It is not enough just to hire workers to dig holes and then fill them in again,? said Toshihiro Ihori, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo. ?One lesson from Japan is that public works get the best results when they create something useful for the future.?

In total, Japan spent $6.3 trillion on construction-related public investment between 1991 and September of last year, according to the Cabinet Office. The spending peaked in 1995 and remained high until the early 2000s, when it was cut amid growing concerns about ballooning budget deficits. More recently, the governing Liberal Democratic Party has increased spending again to revive the economy and the party?s own flagging popularity.

In the end, say economists, it was not public works but an expensive cleanup of the debt-ridden banking system, combined with growing exports to China and the United States, that brought a close to Japan?s Lost Decade. This has led many to conclude that spending did little more than sink Japan deeply into debt, leaving an enormous tax burden for future generations.

In the United States, it has also led to calls in Congress, particularly by Republicans, not to repeat the errors of Japan?s failed economic stimulus. They argue that it makes more sense to cut taxes, and let people decide how to spend their own money, than for the government to decide how to invest public funds. Japan put more emphasis on increased spending than tax cuts during its slump, but ultimately did reduce consumption taxes to encourage consumer spending as well.

Economists tend to divide into two camps on the question of Japan?s infrastructure spending: those, many of them Americans like Mr. Geithner, who think it did not go far enough; and those, many of them Japanese, who think it was a colossal waste.

Among ordinary Japanese, the spending is widely disparaged for having turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state and making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs. Much of the blame has fallen on the Liberal Democratic Party, which has long used government spending to grease rural vote-buying machines that help keep the party in power.

But some Western economists who have studied Japan?s experience say the stimulus accomplished more than it is now given credit for. At a minimum, they argue, it saved the economy from an outright, 1930s-style collapse.

Moreover, they say, any direct comparison of Japan and the United States is inevitably misleading, because Japan has spent so much more over the years on infrastructure. Having neglected its roads, bridges, water treatment plants and more over the years, the United States is bound to generate a greater payback for such spending than would Japan.

Beyond that, proponents of Keynesian-style stimulus spending in the United States say that Japan?s approach failed to accomplish more not because of waste but because it was never tried wholeheartedly. They argue that instead of making one big push to pump up the economy with economic shock therapy, Japan spread its spending out over several years, diluting the effects.

After years of heavy spending in the first half of the 1990s, economists say, Japan?s leaders grew concerned about growing budget deficits and cut back too soon, snuffing out the recovery in its infancy, much as Roosevelt did to the American economy in 1936. Growth that, by 1996, had reached 3 percent was suffocated by premature spending cuts and tax increases, they say. While spending remained high in the late 1990s, Japan never gave the economy another full-fledged push, these economists say.

They also say that the size of Japan?s apparently successful stimulus in the early 1990s suggests that the United States will need to spend far more than the current $820 billion to get results. Between 1991 and 1995, Japan spent some $2.1 trillion on public works, in an economy roughly half as large as that of the United States, according to the Cabinet Office. ?Stimulus worked in Japan when it was tried,? said David Weinstein, a professor of Japanese economics at Columbia University. ?Japan?s lesson is that, if anything, the current U.S. stimulus will not be enough.?

Most Japanese economists have tended to take a bleaker view of their nation?s track record, saying that Japan spent more than enough money, but wasted too much of it on roads to nowhere and other unneeded projects.

Dr. Ihori of the University of Tokyo did a survey of public works in the 1990s, concluding that the spending created almost no additional economic growth. Instead of spreading beneficial ripple effects across the economy, he found that the spending actually led to declines in business investment by driving out private investors. He also said job creation was too narrowly focused in the construction industry in rural areas to give much benefit to the overall economy.

He agreed with other critics that the 1990s stimulus failed because too much of it went to roads and bridges, overbuilding this already heavily developed nation. Critics also said decisions on how to spend the money were made behind closed doors by bureaucrats, politicians and the construction industry, and often reflected political considerations more than economic. Dr. Ihori said the United States appeared to be striking a better balance by investing in new energy and information-technology infrastructure as well as replacing aging infrastructure.

Japan?s experience also seems to argue for spending heavily to promote social development. A 1998 report by the Japan Institute for Local Government, a nonprofit policy research group, found that every 1 trillion yen, or about $11.2 billion, spent on social services like care for the elderly and monthly pension payments added 1.64 trillion yen in growth. Financing for schools and education delivered an even bigger boost of 1.74 trillion yen, the report found.

But every 1 trillion yen spent on infrastructure projects in the 1990s increased Japan?s gross domestic product, a measure of its overall economic size, by only 1.37 trillion yen, mainly by creating jobs and other improvements like reducing travel times.

Economists said the finding suggested that while infrastructure spending may yield strong results for developing nations, creating jobs in higher-paying knowledge-based services like health care and education can bring larger benefits to advanced economies like Japan, with its aging population.

?In hindsight, Japan should have built public works that address the problems it faces today, like aging, energy and food sources,? said Takehiko Hobo, a professor emeritus of public finance at Shimane University in Matsue, the main city of Shimane. ?This obsession with building roads is a holdover from an earlier era.?

The fruits of that obsession are apparent across Shimane, a rural prefecture about the size of Delaware where Hamada is located. Each town seems to have its own art museum, domed athletic center and government-built tourist attraction like the Nima Sand Museum, a giant hourglass in a glass pyramid. The prefecture, with 740,000 residents, even has three commercial airports able to handle jets, including the $250 million Hagi-Iwami Airport, which sits eerily empty with just two flights per day.

In Hamada, residents say the city?s most visible ?hakomono,? the Japanese equivalent of ?white elephant,? was its own bridge to nowhere, the $70 million Marine Bridge, whose 1,006-foot span sat almost completely devoid of traffic on a recent morning. Built in 1999, the bridge links the city to a small, sparsely populated island already connected by a shorter bridge.

?The bridge? It?s a dud,? said Masahiro Shimada, 70, a retired city official who was fishing near the port. ?Maybe we could use it for bungee jumping,? he joked.

Koichi Matsuoka, a retired professor of policy at the University of Shimane in Hamada, said useless projects like the Marine Bridge were the reason that years of huge spending had brought few long-term benefits here. While Shimane has had the highest per capita spending on public works in Japan for the last 18 years, thanks to powerful local politicians like the deceased former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, its per capita annual income of $26,000 ranked it 40th among Japan?s 47 prefectures, he said. He said the spending had left Shimane $11 billion in debt, twice the size of the prefectural government?s annual budget.

Still, local officials in Hamada warn that their city?s economy will collapse without public works, though they recognize the spending cannot continue forever. They offered their own lesson to American communities in the Obama era: when you choose public works projects, be sure to get ones with lasting economic impact.

Among Hamada?s many public works projects, the biggest benefits had come from the prison, the university and the Aquas aquarium, with its popular whales, they said. These had created hundreds of permanent jobs and attracted students and families with children to live in a city where nearly a third of residents were over 65.

?Roads and bridges are attractive, but they create jobs only during construction,? said Shunji Nakamura, chief of the city?s industrial policy section. ?You need projects with good jobs that will last through a bad economy.?

Makiko Inoue contributed reporting.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Very true. Though isn't the idea now to build "shovel ready" projects? Mostly what we need is not new bridges and roads but to fix the ones we have? I haven't seen or heard anything out of this stimulus package that is akin to building a new Interstate system.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Very true. Though isn't the idea now to build "shovel ready" projects? Mostly what we need is not new bridges and roads but to fix the ones we have? I haven't seen or heard anything out of this stimulus package that is akin to building a new Interstate system.

Acually, there is a lot of new road and bridge "pork projects" planned for the "Red" States. The "shovel ready" projects proposed on Missouri are 100% new roads, in the middle of no where.

 

[JohnAKeith]

I had forgotten about that national high-speed line map.

I have to say, a lot of it seems useless. No doubt routes have been added just to placate certain cities / states plus the end goal seems to be a "intra-national' line.

I don't think we need that. Yeah, it would be nice to have a high-speed line from one side of the country to the other, but is it really necessary / needed?

"Why did you build the high-speed line between major US cities?"

"Because that's where they keep the people."

(That's a paraphrase of a famous quote.)

 

[jenkins]

I had forgotten about that national high-speed line map.

I have to say, a lot of it seems useless. No doubt routes have been added just to placate certain cities / states plus the end goal seems to be a "intra-national' line.

I don't think we need that. Yeah, it would be nice to have a high-speed line from one side of the country to the other, but is it really necessary / needed?

"Why did you build the high-speed line between major US cities?"

"Because that's where they keep the people."

(That's a paraphrase of a famous quote.)

The point isn't to be able to ride a high-speed train from coast to coast, but instead from a major city to nearby major cities. Not all parts of the map have the same priority, but in general, the routes connect major cities. The fact that they also connect one coast to the other is incidental--it just shows how the city-to-city networks overlap enough to connect both coasts.

Also, a high-speed network is sort of pointless without a good regional rail network--that should be the first priority in any rail building.

 

[czsz]

It's really kind of absurd when Green Bay and Casper, Wyoming get high speed rail spurs. Building that network is not like laying sidewalk.

 

[jass]

It's really kind of absurd when Green Bay and Casper, Wyoming get high speed rail spurs. Building that network is not like laying sidewalk.

Only the green lines are designated corridors, the rest is just dreams, or standard speed.

 

[kennedy]

Acually, there is a lot of new road and bridge "pork projects" planned for the "Red" States. The "shovel ready" projects proposed on Missouri are 100% new roads, in the middle of no where.

First off, we're not totally red. McCain BARELY got Missouri, and it wasn't called until long after Obama was declared the winner.

Second, the "shovel ready" projects here are pretty much a joke. They closed down Highway 40, the one that runs basically from west to east, from downtown KC to downtown STL, to "smoothe it out." Called it their Big Dig. It wasn't necessary, all they did was re-pave and make cleaner bridges. And new streetlights. The stimulus money they're asking for here is mostly for the mass transit system (METRO), which is a huge joke. The concept is perfect, but the people aren't willing to support it. Additional funds for the program to extend the LRT network didn't pass the vote, so now they're going after federal money.

Point is-they aren't building new roads, they're just "repairing" the "old" ones. Which isn't totally awful, but they could use it for better things. Which would probably happen with the stimulus money-from what I've heard, major METRO extension, and serious repairs to the bridge over the river (there's a few, but one that's in pretty bad shape-the Washington, maybe).