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Archive for the ‘Policy’ Category

Republicans and Infrastructure: Still Together, Despite Disagreements

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

REGIONAL PLAN ASSOCIATION/ AMERICA 2050
Infrastructure and transportation is traditionally a bipartisan issue – characterized by equal opportunity “pork.” Under intensely partisan congresses, transportation bills passed in 2005 during the George W. Bush Administration, in 1998 during the Clinton Administration, and in 1991 during the George H.W. Bush Administration. The Surface Transportation Assistance Act even passed in 1982 during Ronald Reagan’s administration and with the president’s support, despite the Gipper’s heavily anti-federal-government stances.

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Investments for a Competitive and Healthy Minnesota: A Playbook for Minnesota’s New Governor

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
Recommendations 1

About 1000 Friends of Minnesota
Minnesota needs a transportation system that is safer, enhances and preserves communities, and saves families and businesses money through greater reliance on public transit, bicycling, and walking, and better maintenance of the infrastructure we already have. Transportation is about much more than getting from A to B. It is not an end, but it should be a means for a community to achieve broader goals of economic development, neighborhood revitalization, and environmental sustainability.

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Strategies for Improving the Project Agreement Process Between Highway Agencies and Railroads

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH BOARD
North American railroads and public highway departments interact thousands of times annually as the highway agencies conduct projects that cross over, under, or parallel to the railways…The focus of this project is to provide recommended standard agreements, standard processes, and best practices that can help both sides reduce the time and cost of project reviews.

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High-Speed Rail Debate Refuses to Quiet Down

Monday, November 1st, 2010

In a November 1 column in the Washington Post reproduced below, the respected economist Robert J. Samuelson attacks the Administration’s high-speed rail program as “wasteful spending masquerading as a respectable social cause.”…Samuelson’s blunt assessment appears in stark contrast to the Administration’s confident prediction, in the words of top federal transportation officials, of “a world class network of high-speed corridors” that would connect “80 percent of America in the next 25 years at a cost of $500 billion.” How can professional judgments be so diametricaly opposed and whose judgment will prevail?

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Guest on The Infra Blog: Robert Paaswell, Ph.D., Executive Director, CUNY Institute for Urban Systems

Monday, November 1st, 2010
paaswell-robert

Dr. Robert Paaswell, Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at the City College of New York, is also the founding Director of the City University Institute for Urban Systems, a major University-wide initiative to examine the intersection of new technology, changing institutional structure and innovative finance on the provision of infrastructure in the 21 st Century. Paaswell is Director Emeritus of the federally supported University Transportation Research Center (UTRC).

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Prospects for Transportation Legislation and Other Infrastructure Ventures

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

What are the prospects for surface transportation legislation in the 112th Congress? We explored this question informally in conversations on the sidelines of several recent meetings and conferences, by reviewing debates on the National Journal’s Transportation Blog and by soliciting observations from colleagues in the transportation community.

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Gridlock Sam: The Tea Party’s Bridge to Beyond Nowhere

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

BLUEPRINT AMERICA
It’s so easy to get on the bandwagon: lower my taxes, smaller and more efficient government, don’t touch my liberties, throw the bums out, etc. But what if that bandwagon has to cross a bridge? And what if that bridge hasn’t been maintained in years?

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Impact of Alternate Public Transit and Rail Investment Scenarios on the Labor Market

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010
Click to Enlarge - Table 5

ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE
Transportation investments represent an opportunity for Congress to kick the economy into a higher gear by creating millions of well-paying jobs while simultaneously boosting the condition and performance of our nation’s transportation system.

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Guest on The Infra Blog: Samuel Schwartz, P.E., President, CEO & Founder, Sam Schwartz Engineering

Monday, October 25th, 2010
Sam Schwartz

Sam Schwartz has nearly 40 years of experience in the field of Transportation Engineering and Traffic Safety. He is considered a worldwide authority in traffic, highway, bridge, transit and parking systems. He was New York City’s traffic commissioner and the chief engineer for highways, bridges, ferries and other New York City infrastructure. Schwartz specializes in development of urban traffic programs utilizing his expert knowledge in traffic demand management, transit systems management, traffic calming and transportation planning and engineering. He has been in the vanguard of Intelligent Transportation Systems development and wrote the seminal paper, Intelligent Traffic, which received the International Institute of Transportation Award in 1985. Schwartz is also the author of Gridlock Sam, a popular New York Daily News column addressing traffic matters in New York City. His links with multimedia networks are extensive, spanning radio, television and the internet.

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Video: Decentralized Water Systems

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Approaches to Onsite Management – National Environmental Services Center 2002 – Product DPDVMG56 – Produced with funding by the EPA, this video details approaches to Onsite Management. The National Environmental Services Center (NESC) exists to assist small and rural communities with their drinking water, wastewater, environmental training, solid waste, infrastructure security, and utility management needs and to help them find solutions to problems they face. Noncommercial use only.
-PublicResourceOrg on YouTube

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