Worth the click: The Next Generation DOT (Departments of Transportation).
Charles Marohn’s latest in Better! Cities & Towns on the dilemma and prospects for the people charged with building and maintaining our highways:
… misunderstandings we have about growth and development correlate highway spending with increased prosperity. In reality, this is an illusion brought about by quick and easy development leveraged off these massive investments. The lack of productivity in this approach means that, over the long term, the costs far outweigh the gains. It is the Ponzi scheme of the Suburban Experiment. We’re in the unwinding phase.
Nobody should understand that more clearly than our nation’s DOTs. They are simultaneously over committed and under funded. While they obsess about the latter, it is the former that they will ultimately be forced to reconcile.
Many in these agencies — especially the second tier of leaders that are a little more removed from our highway building heydays and a little further from retirement than the first tier — understand this clearly, but they lack an acceptable alternative approach. They are trapped by the inertia of their organization.
He offers nine principles and understandings that a Next Generation DOT should embody – here.
This seems like a good opportunity to plug my blog of stroad alternatives: http://stroadtoboulevard.tumblr.com/
There’s nothing inherently wrong with wide streets. It just depends a) how (or indeed whether) you divide up the space and b) what buildings you have around it. These are both policy choices (i.e. by public servants acting with our cash on our behalf) not market choices. We need to get them right.