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Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads
An anonymous reader writes: During a recent Urban Land Institute talk, the director of the Iowa Department of Transportation, Paul Trombino, told an audience that the road network in Iowa was probably going to "shrink." Calling for fewer highways isn't what you'd normally expect from a government transportation official, but since per capita driving has peaked in the U.S., it might make sense for states to question whether or not to spend their transportation budgets on new roads.
It certainly doesn't make sense to plow money in to maintaining roads that are not being used. But there is also a cost with abandoning roads, so the overall benefit must be determined on a road by road basis. But that certainly is a departure from the general assumption that we must maintain all roads.
Do you shut down a road, or let it die a slow death?
I for one applaud this trailblazing official who is paving the way by providing a roadmap for other officials to follow while going down the road to more efficient government and leading the drive towards a more fiscally responsible America.
Now if only somone could give us a car analogy
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The article talks about how "per-capita driving has peaked," but that's not the whole issue. It makes sense to stop building roads when the total amount of driving has peaked. For that to happen, one of several scenarios needs to occur:
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Where we're going, we don't need roads!
Happy 30th, Back to the Future!
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
In these flat agricultural states, a vast network of farm roads have been built over the years. The hallmark of over-roaded areas is the use of four-digit state route numbers in places that are mostly rural. Now that family farms are consolidating into large agribusiness operations, fewer access points are needed. Meanwhile, the cities need more roads and maintenance, so these states needed to reprioritize.
I think these points contribute to the problem, but there's a lot to consider here.
For starters, we're talking about Iowa in this story. Iowa isn't exactly one of the states people flock to in droves to find employment. Don't get me wrong here... I have no grudge against Iowa. I think it just happens to be like other Midwestern states where except for a couple of major cities, it's primarily farm land and rural areas, where most of the car traffic is on interstates, traveling through the state to a destination elsewhere. It's quite possible they're just taking a good look at the situation and saying, "Hey... We could do drivers a favor by improving the quality of the roads that really matter, while just abandoning some of the lightly traveled alternate routes instead of wasting road money maintaining them."
Out here in the metro DC area, by contrast? Our roads are jam packed with traffic at seemingly all hours -- and that's despite having a pretty extensive light rail and commuter train system in place, linked to an extensive bus system, plus various options like rental bicycles.
Overall, I think it's short-sighted to write off the highway and road infrastructure as less important since "today's generation hates driving and can't afford decent cars anyway". (Not saying you did that in your post, but commenting in general here.) I think soon enough, we're going to see self-driving vehicles becoming commonplace. And that, in turn, is going to change a lot of things about transportation. (EG. If the car drives itself and knows how to safely get around, you no longer have to worry if it's "ok to let your friend borrow your car" over concerns he/she might wreck it.) So it'll lead to a lot more sharing of vehicles. People will buy one as more of an investment than a "huge but unfortunately necessary expense", as they make money using it to give other people rides when they're not using it themselves.
I'm a Californian. Nothing in this discussion makes any sense to me. The idea that you may not need more roads is... completely foreign. Do I need a visa to move to Iowa? It sounds great.
So the homeowner isn't trying to drive down them at 70 mph in a sports car, but rather at 20mph in a pickup truck.
I gather you've never lived in the country. Folk will be driving down them at 70 mph in their pickups.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
more than a decade later states are waking up to empty highways.
"Empty highways"? Even allowing that your statement includes hyperbole it doesn't fit with the fact that the US population is growing. Personally outside of some of the most rural parts of the US I've NEVER seen "empty highways". Most in fact seem to need more lanes than they have.
The US, in general, is a declining superpower and its starting to show.
Spare me. People have been spouting this nonsense as a political meme for most of my life. Every out of power politician declares that "we need to make america great again", thereby implying that somehow the country isn't great. They then follow it up by declaring the US to be "the greatest country in the world". So which is it? The US has the largest economy, the largest military, leads the world in scientific research, and does so with just 5% of the world's population. Declining? I've been around for a half century and can't say I see the evidence. Things are better in the US than when I was born. Just because some other countries have been doing well (China etc) doesn't mean things are going in the shitter here.
our skin-and-bones transportation budget, crumbling bridges, and pothole ridden highways are so common as to be a feature.
Any shortfalls can be solved overnight by simply reallocating some of the ludicrous amount of money we spend on our military to domestic infrastructure. More money could be saved by going to a single payer health care system like most of the rest of the civilized world. We have the money but our leaders have chosen to spend it poorly. We like to pretend we need to spend more on our military than the next 17 largest countries combined. We like to pretend that socialized medicine is somehow evil when in fact avoiding it is the unethical thing to do. Not to mention that we already have it (Medicare) and are in denial about it.
Millenials like myself hate driving.
Better get over that. Not being snarky, it's just a reality of living in most parts of the US. Most of the country is simply not accessible without a car and that isn't going to change anytime soon. You don't have to love to drive but it's going to be a part of your life most likely whether you like it or not.
we're crippled by inexorable college debt and newfound levels of unaffordable housing. regular maintenance and gas, insurance and most importantly our general penchant for unemployment after the housing decline means we arent really interested in a car.
That sounds like a lot of excuses to me. Adjusted for inflation gas is cheaper now than it was when I was a child. You can avoid a lot of college debt by not going to expensive private colleges you cannot afford. Spend a year or two at a community college and finish up at your state college. You can get a great education and not be in the poor house. Insurance? You can be covered by your parents until you are 26. If you can't get a job by then with unemployment at 5% then you probably are doing something wrong.
Other generations have had it harder than you. Would you have preferred to grow up during the Great Depression or WWII? How about as a minority 50 or even 25 years ago? I assure you things were harder then.
That's a remnant of the WPA. Wisconsin (and to some extent, Illinois) are the same way. Class B highways every mile.
Did you ever notice that the border foliage on the edges of the roads change when you hit state borders? That's also from the WPA days, when states ran their own "beautification" (and anti-erosion) measures. I learned this during my long-distance bicycling days. When all you have to look at for miles and miles are soybeans and corn, you tend to notice little things like road foliage. I finally asked some old dude who told me the story of the road crews that came through planting the foliage.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Regarding the mountains - realize that some parts of Iowa are so flat that on a clear day, a person with good eyesight can look out toward the horizon and see the back of his own head.
Everyone I've known who grew up in Iowa and moved away wanted to move back, if that tells you anything