The Infra Blog

A Glimpse into the Past: Archival Infra Films

Thursday, May 19th, 2011

These archival infra films show us how things used to be built, and how systems used to run.

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Pragmatic Funding Decisions Mark the Final Round of Rail Grants

Thursday, May 12th, 2011

Pragmatic funding decisions have marked the third and final round of awards in the Administration’s $10 billion High-Speed Rail Program. The awards, announced on May 9, confirmed what critics, including this column, have long maintained: the White House high-speed rail initiative, stripped of its high-blown rhetoric, is in fact a program of modest incremental improvements to existing Amtrak passenger rail services. As such, the initiative represents a small but useful step in restoring more reliable intercity passenger rail service— but it hardly deserves the hype and exaggerated claims that have been used to characterize it. Rather, it is a “victory for incrementalism,” in the words of Scott Thomasson, policy director of the Progressive Policy Institute.

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$2 Billion High-Speed Rail Investment

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

The Department’s Federal Railroad Administration selected 15 states and Amtrak to receive $2.02 billion for 22 high-speed intercity passenger rail projects as part of a nationwide network that will connect 80 percent of Americans to high-speed rail in 25 years.

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Mapping HSR Travel Times

Monday, May 9th, 2011
Midwest High-Speed Rail

An interactive map from Midwest High-Speed Rail predicts the travel time between stations in the Midwest using high-speed rail.

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Skepticism Greets US DOT’s Draft Transportation Bill

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

An undated 498-page draft of US DOT’s legislative proposal for surface transportation reauthorization, the “Transportation Opportunities Act,” has been making the rounds in Washington for the past week. Its publication, however, has been largely ignored by the transportation community. What would ordinarily be an eagerly awaited event and the source of much comment, has passed virtually unnoticed…Partly, it is because the DOT draft contains no surprises: it merely restates the proposals already revealed in the President’s FY 2012 Budget request. But more importantly, the draft has been ignored by Washington stakeholders and political observers because it has been judged to lack political savvy and realism.

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Interactive Map: Flooding in the Midwest

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011
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An interactive map from the Wall Street Journal displays the severity of the flooding currently happening in the US Midwest, where “Monday evening, the Ohio River gauge at Cairo read 61.44 feet, nearly two feet higher than the record of 59.51 feet set in 1937.”

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Guest on The Infra Blog: Nicholas Santero, Research Scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011
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Nicholas Santero is a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research uses life-cycle assessment (LCA) to improve the sustainability of engineered systems. At MIT, Dr. Santero is part of a team that is working to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings and pavements using cost-effective approaches. He has a Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.S. from the University of California, Davis, all in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is a licensed professional engineer in California.

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Adolfo Carrión, HUD Regional Administrator, Announces “Sustainable Communities” Initiative

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
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Adolfo Carrión, HUD Regional Administrator, announced the “New York-Connecticut Sustainable Communities” initiative at Regional Plan Association’s 21st annual Regional Assembly, “Innovation and the Global City,” on April 15th in New York City. Steven C.F. Anderson, Managing Director, InfrastructureUSA, spoke with Mr. Carrión and Joel Ettinger, Executive Director, NYMTC, at the event.

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Guest on The Infra Blog: Jay Walder, Chairman & CEO, New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
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Jay H. Walder joined the MTA as chairman and chief executive officer on October 5, 2009. In his first year in charge of the country’s largest public transportation system, Walder has overseen an agenda of change that included the most aggressive cost-cutting initiative in the history of the MTA and numerous customer improvements.

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Guest on The Infra Blog: Governor Dannel Malloy, Connecticut

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
Malloy, Dannel

Governor Malloy was Stamford’s longest serving Mayor, serving for 14 years from 1995 to 2009. Under his leadership, Stamford underwent a drastic transformation and became one of the country’s top ten most livable cities, according to Forbes magazine…On November 2, 2010, Dannel P. Malloy was elected the 88th Governor of the State of Connecticut and the first governor to have been elected under the state’s clean elections program.

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Dear Friends,

 

It is encouraging to finally see clear signs of federal action to support a comprehensive US infrastructure investment plan.

 

Now more than ever, our advocacy is needed to keep stakeholders informed and connected, and to hold politicians to their promises to finally fix our nation’s ailing infrastructure.

 

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We require your support in order to rise to this occasion, to make the most of this opportunity. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to InfrastructureUSA.org.

 

Steve Anderson

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SteveAnderson@InfrastructureUSA.org

917-940-7125

InfrastructureUSA: Citizen Dialogue About Civil Infrastructure