John Hennessy III,
P.E.
Mobile connectivity—even with all the new, multi-media capabilities being added to it—is still basically about simple, direct communication. Healthcare in the U.S. is marrying technology, professional philosophy, and government programs to reach the same basic goal of improved communication. Because of this, healthcare infrastructure need not rely exclusively on the spread on high-speed access to ensure quality care access.
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BLACK & VEATCH
Now more than ever, the increasing use of technology offers utility operators greater understanding of their networks and how customers consume power, water, natural gas and data. Forecasting historically required large teams to examine past operations and create an operations snapshot, often long in the past. Now, predictive analytics, or Adaptive Planning, is redefining how complex systems can be managed through rapid analysis of real-time information.
SMART GROWTH AMERICA
Appropriate pricing strategies can raise revenues and manage demand, keeping costs down. On the other hand, when transportation system users do not see appropriate price signals, demand is artificially high, increasing congestion and pressure for new capacity. State departments of transportation generally cannot impose price signals on their own, but they can work with a variety of stakeholders and decision-makers, from legislators to insurance companies, to accomplish these goals.
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.
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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.
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SMART GROWTH AMERICA
Scarce transportation dollars need to be spent where they do the most good. But making changes to long-standing practices, some of which are ensconced in law, can be difficult and present a hurdle to state departments of transportation (DOTs) looking to get the best bang for their buck. Pressing forward with revenue allocation and project selection reform represents a major way in which DOTs can deliver projects with greater impact more quickly. Many agencies are now reforming project selection and formula funding processes for sub-state units of government, often tying proposed spending to state, departmental, and/or local goals and objectives.
See how FHWA and its partners collaborate to make biking and walking safer, affordable, more accessible, and an integral part of livable communities. To learn more about how FHWA works, visit http://www.fhwa.dot.gov
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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.
UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA) General Information The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD) has finalized the science report, Connectivity of Streams and Wetlands to Downstream Waters: A Review and Synthesis of the Scientific Evidence. The purpose of this report is to summarize the current scientific understanding about the connectivity […]
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The era when fuel taxes alone could cover robust highway construction and maintenance programs is over. Even then, non-highway modes often struggled for support. Funding transportation out of general revenue is problematic, both be-cause it is subject to changing budget priorities and because it underprices transportation, creating excess demand. State departments of transportation (DOTs) need new sources of dedicated revenues, preferably tied to user fees in cases where excess demand—which is both economically and environmentally costly—can be curtailed through the market-style discipline that such fees impose. User fees may also appeal to stakeholders’ sense of fairness, making them more politically palatable than “subsidies” from general tax revenues.
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