Innovation Newsbriefs
Vol. 26, No. 2
With the prospect of a gasoline tax increase pretty much ruled out both by the White House and the Republican House leadership, and with various proposals for funding transportation through corporate tax reform meeting with skepticism from leading Republican lawmakers and thus facing an uncertain future (not to mention their unlikely passage before the current transportation measure expires at the end of May) perhaps the time has come to reconsider the way we fund transportation. Maybe we should abandon our 50-year old reliance on the gasoline tax and the Highway Trust Fund as the sole source of federal revenue and consider additional ways of paying for transportation infrastructure.
The Infra Blog
Needed: A Fresh Approach to Funding America’s Infrastructure
Monday, February 2nd, 2015New York City: Rail Service for LaGuardia Airport (Finally)
Wednesday, January 28th, 2015
New York City’s airports will get a major facelift with Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2015 Opportunity Agenda.
The announcement doesn’t come as a surprise, given that LaGuardia recently suffered some very public infrastructure criticisms. Add to that over $5 billion in one-off legal settlements from Wall Street recently awarded to New York State, and you’ve got a perfect recipe for infrastructure investment.
View this complete Infra Blog post...Infrastructure & the 2015 State of the Union Address
Thursday, January 22nd, 2015
The message was clear in President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address: we need to put aside our differences and work together to build a comprehensive, long-term plan that will create jobs and restore our ailing infrastructure systems.
View this complete Infra Blog post...Healthy Infrastructure – A Matter of Life and Death
Wednesday, January 21st, 2015
This month an opinion piece came out on the Forbes website proposing that telemedicine’s day has come. The piece, written by venture capitalist Skip Fleshman, basically predicts that 2015 will be the year that remote interactions between medical professionals and patients become not just possible, but practical. “I spend a lot of time crisscrossing the country chatting with leading healthcare providers and insurers about their technology needs,” he writes. “By far the area they are most interested in is telemedicine.”…The people who stand the most to gain from Telemedicine are, unfortunately, the ones least likely to have the infrastructure needed for it. The CDC issued a report two years ago highlighting the various disparities in healthcare access by population groups in the U.S. In no surprise the report revealed that when viewed as groups, a number of factors reduced the availability of healthcare access.
View this complete Infra Blog post...The Gas Tax and Some Fresh Thoughts on How to Pay For Transportation
Thursday, January 15th, 2015Innovation Newsbriefs
Vol. 26, No. 1
With gasoline prices at a five year low, isn’t this the perfect time to raise the federal gas tax? A growing chorus of voices including several infuential Republican Senators — John Thune (R-SD), Bob Corker (R-TN) Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and Orrin Hatch (R-UT)—seem to think so. So does the Washington Post and the New York Times. “Now is the best time Washington has seen in years to raise the federal gas tax,” a Post editorial said. “A modest increase in the gas tax would hardly be noticeable to most Americans,” echoed the New York Times…President Obama isn’t so sure.
Guest on The Infra Blog: Alison Taylor, Vice President, Sustainability – Americas, Siemens Corporation
Wednesday, January 14th, 2015
Alison Taylor is Vice President, Sustainability-Americas at Siemens Corporation. In this position, she is responsible for driving the sustainability program for the Americas and acting as a resource for sustainability initiatives across Siemens’ business sectors.
“Rather than fixing a short-term problem, or addressing a crisis, or repairing a problem that may have occurred, let’s say, after a major storm or mother-nature event, sustainability is about a more long-term view. Will we be able to count on that infrastructure many years in the future? How will it serve the public? How will it serve the needs of the city?”
View this complete Infra Blog post...Interactive Map: Reducing Leakage from State Water Systems
Tuesday, January 13th, 2015
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has assembled a new resource to help plug the holes in our nation’s aging water infrastructure. According to the NRDC, “billions of gallons of water are lost every day from U.S. drinking water systems.” With climate change and demand patterns affecting water resources throughout the U.S., we need to do whatever it takes to monitor and prevent leakage system wide.
View this complete Infra Blog post...February 4-5, Panama City: 3rd Annual Central American & Caribbean Capital Projects & Infrastructure Summit
Thursday, January 8th, 2015
The 3rd Annual Central American & Caribbean Capital Projects & Infrastructure Summit will unite the regions gathering the largest project developers, concessionaires, construction companies, operators, investors and government leaders to discuss opportunities about a wide variety of sectors including: roads & highway networks, canals and ports, airports, railways, mining infrastructure, telecom infrastructure, oil and gas, real state, mass transportation systems, water sanitation and sewage and technology.
View this complete Infra Blog post...Guest on The Infra Blog: Therese McMillan, Acting Administrator, Federal Transit Administration (FTA)
Wednesday, January 7th, 2015
Therese McMillan is currently the Acting Administrator of the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). She joined FTA as Deputy Administrator on July 2, 2009. As Deputy, McMillan assisted the Administrator in leading a staff of more than 500 in the Washington D.C. headquarters office and 10 regional offices throughout the United States, and implementing an annual budget approximating $10 billion.
“The economic impact of transit investments has different faces…First, it should be recognized that any time you are building and repairing transit services, that in and of itself is creating jobs in the near term. Another thing, though, that’s important to think about in terms of economic impact, is the ability of transit to connect people to their jobs, and often to connect them in a more efficient and effective way than being caught in traffic and congestion.”
View this complete Infra Blog post...For highway innovation, 2014 was a very good year
Friday, January 2nd, 2015
Innovation and investment in infrastructure doesn’t take a holiday. Throughout 2014, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has been relentless in working with state DOTs to save time, save money and save lives, by encouraging the use of innovative technologies and methods to build roads, bridges and highways better, faster and more cost-effectively.
View this complete Infra Blog post...    |
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