Shovel-Ready Infrastructure Not Necessarily Future-Ready Infrastructure

Shovel-Ready Infrastructure Not Necessarily Future-Ready Infrastructure

Funding Shovel-Ready Projects May Only Dig Nation's Car-Centric Hole Deeper

with John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: Even though Washington has approved $17 billion in TARP funding to Detroit's Big Three car makers to tide them over to spring, the news that one renowned billionaire investor has dumped his considerable holdings in Ford, whose stock has plummeted this year and now resides at about $2, should be a tale of caution for public officials, from president-elect Barack Obama and a new Democratically controlled congress who want to open the flood gates on massive spending on infrastructure to under-gird its economic recovery plan, to consider the best interests of the nation as it chooses between infrastructure projects ready for a shovel and projects that are ready for the future.

Economic development professionals and public policy makers have rounded up thousands of conventional infrastructure projects, the vast majority of which are about roads and bridges and by extension cars, as projects that but for the lack of a shovel could create jobs quickly.

With the American economy in a tailspin of such velocity that nearly 2 million jobs have been lost in 2008, it is clearly appetizing that car-centric projects involving roads and bridges move to the front of the class ofObama's stimulus package. But the question being raised by a growing chorus of economy watchers is whether throwing billions of dollars into convention projects is wise? The need for the nation to find a better, more affordable and realistic road to mass transit, which is growing in popularity as family and community budgets tighten in the wake of job losses from companies that have thrown in the towel, is clear.

In Ohio, for example, the state department of transportation proudly announced it performed 493 road and bridge projects this year. The same can probably be said for the other 49 states when it comes to road versus non-road projects. A new report issued by a 62-member task force to Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland about the "crisis" state of state transportation efforts, offers guidance on spending. But the guidance, sadly, is for conventional, past-ready projects that some critics of "shovel-ready" projects would say spends good money on old infrastructure that will only gobble up more funds in a handful of years because their life-span is short and repair and maintenance will soon be needed.

Chester Jourdan, executive director of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission and a task force member, said the report represents a long-overdue attempt to "move the state beyond its traditional role as builder and fixer of highways to one as a strategic creator of interconnected public transit, rail, road and water routes that can boost economic development," according to Columbus Business First (CBF).

“Not everything in the report will be put into law, implemented or passed tomorrow,” Jourdan told CBF. “But there are some tremendous opportunities for Ohio to do some things that are significant, bold and innovative.”

High sounding as the report is, it reflects many of the committee's agendas, which appear mired in expanding on conventional, old-school technology. One would be hard pressed to find language in the report that opens the door to include or embrace outlier technology like Tubular Rail or PRT or Monomobile . All three of these "unproven" technologies, as their critics would say of them, are advancing to proof-of-concept [PRT will soon be seen at Heathrow Airport outside London, England]. For supporters of "proven" technology like steel-wheel-on-rail trains, which is proving that building tomorrow's transportation infrastructure based on yesterday's technology is outrageously costly at a time when Ohio, among other states and the nation, is using a straw to breath because its budget is so far under water, with little expectation that new jobs can roll in any time soon.

So while a specific infrastructure project may be "shovel ready," by its very nature it may not be "future ready." Building advanced transportation systems that avoid the pitfalls of current, conventional technologies -- costly, difficult to build and environmentally unfriendly -- seems a wiser, more prudent tact to take for the tsunami of funding Washington will wash over the nation in 2009 to reclaim prosperity and the middle class jobs that are key to it.

Both Tubular Rail and Monomobile represent outlier technologies that have an uphill climb before them. State bureaucrats, totally risk averse by nature, only seem interested in fully baked cakes -- late stage commercialization in program talk -- and don't seem too eager to help start-up companies gain the traction they need to show their technologies may be eminently cheaper than conventional transportation infrastructure, not to mention quicker to be built which translates into new, sustainable jobs. But as Malcolm Gladwell points out in his trilogy of books on the unforseen phenomenon of why new, small events can suddenly bloom into game changers [Tipping Point, Blink and Outlier], a new idea like Tubular Rail, prominently featured in the Discovery Channel's episode on future trains that will air in January, that uses readily available existing technology in a new way isn't shovel-ready but it is "future-ready."

Hungry lobbyists representing the infrastructure status quo will use their sharp elbows to eat up as much of Obama's infrastructure stimulus package as it can, despite the fact that putting money into their agendas may only dig us into a deeper hole because it furthers our dependence on cars and the roads and bridges they need to operate. The same will be true for rail, which is using its capacity for freight. High speed rail on conventional tracks, while it sounds good, is just too expensive. California voters who approved a $9.5 billion bond package this November for only a quarter of the state's projected 800-mile system [close to that of France] will find out that build out costs will be double or triple the cost sold to them, and that's after they settle lawsuits with the Union Pacific railroad over use of their tracks.

The Wright Brothers invented heavier-than-air, controlled flight in 1903. If Orville and Wilbur were to show up today to ask Ohio development officials for money for their outlier technology, the Wrights would be wrong in thinking Ohio would give them a dollar since their invention wasn't in the "late stages of commercialization" and they couldn't bring $3 in investments for every $1 of state funds. So while Ohio, which worries over loosing more of the 250,000 jobs directly or indirectly tied to the Big Three of Detroit, claims itself on its license plate as the "Birthplace of Aviation," it hasn't recognized that a new industry, like Tubular Rail, which can be every bit as powerful as planes or cars, can be had for a song, creating many new jobs in Ohio for former Chrysler, Ford or General Motors employees who have either lost their jobs or soon will be seeking state unemployment benefits.

John Michael Spinelli is an economic development professional and former Ohio Statehouse political reporter and business columnist. He is also Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip of comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Ohio to Washington: Get Our Motor Running

Ohio to Washington: Get Our Motor Running

Ohio Officials Says Big Three Automakers Must Not Be Allowed to Fail

OhioNewsBureau

with John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: The governors of the united states of America went to Philadelphia Tuesday to ask the next president, and by extension the future congress for an economic life jacket of about $176 billion. The governors met in the nation's first capital while corporate leaders from Detroit's Big Three automakers traveled to the current capital, downsizing themselves from company jets to cars, asking for a bridge loan to the future of about $30 billion.

Among the 41 governors from states with buckling budgets was Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio. In office for less than two years, the poor boy from Appalachia in the southeast took over a state already in economic trouble, when in 2006 he became the first Democratic elected to governor in 16 years . State finances have waned and worsened from his first day on the job to now, as demonstrated by current income shortfalls that have prompted Strickland to impose two budget cuts already with another one waiting on deck.

As the first capital was in Pennsylvania, current Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, became a default spokesman for other governors whose state finances are either smoldering or have burst into flames, like California, where a $28 billion deficit prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to hope government can help, contradicting his party's patron saint, Ronald Reagan, who famously mocked government for being the problem not a solution.

The day before he left for his meeting in the City of Brotherly Love with President-elect Barack Obama, Strickland spent Monday pulling the curtain to the public on the scary state of Ohio's economic picture.

In simple terms, state leaders are faced with a $640 million shortfall for this biennium, and could be looking at a future hole of $7.3 billion, a figure that skyrockets if the automakers and their related vendors and suppliers, who total nearly 250,000 workers, get called out on strikes by congress, especially in the Senate where enough votes to let them implode could win the day.

One Ohio senate member whose district is nestled in northeast Ohio, where many of the state's auto-related jobs are found, is proposing the Ohio legislature approve a resolution asking congress to provide immediate support for US automakers.

With auto industry and labor union leaders at his side, Dale Miller, a Democrat from Cleveland, wants congressional funders to understand the importance of cars to Ohio, but also wants car industry leaders to know they must undertake big changes to remake their companies.

"America cannot lose its domestic automotive industry," Miller said in a Tuesday afternoon media release. Appointed to the Senate but now in his first full term, Miller said "Too many jobs are at stake, and we cannot be a great nation without a strong manufacturing base...We must take decisive action to help and require our domestic manufacturers to do their part to get their house in order."

So what's at stake for Strickland, Miller and Ohio if the Big Three don't get their tank filled in Washington? According to statistics from the Ohio Department of Development, in 2006, the Ohio Department of Development estimated the economic impact of the motor vehicle assembly and related manufacturing in the state of Ohio to be $93 billion dollars in sales and employment up to 248,000 people. These numbers represented 12.3 percent of totals sales and 3.7 percent of total employment in Ohio.

Ohio's auto industry ranks second in the United States in automobile production and ranks first in the country in the number of auto suppliers.

Nationally, approximately 4percent of U.S. gross domestic product is auto-related and represents almost 10 percent of U.S. industrial production by value. One out of every ten U.S. jobs is auto-related, and in Ohio more than 253,000 people, or about 5 percent of the work force work in the auto industry.

Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, said plans auto leaders are bringing to congress should be "viable, forward looking and deserving of tax payer investment."

She said intervention will happen one way or another, and that it should be through a short-term TARP loan that can get them to the end of March next year.

If their faux humility and mia culpas extracted under duress win them the funding they are asking for, General Motors will drive away with $18 billion, Chrysler will park $7 billion and Ford will fill its trunk with $9 billion. Chrysler said it will likely cut 25 percent of its workforce, another blow to Ohio.

The labor leaders who will join state senator Miller Wednesday in Columbus at the Statehouse, will be asked to lobby for major new concessions to lower costs of production, a demand Republican leaders, especially one with foreign car makers in their districts, will demand to win their vote.

Everyone, even state leaders, want leaders of the Big Three to come to town with a new plan, not a new sales pitch. Gentleman - start our engines.

John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio Statehouse government and political reporter and business columnist. To send a tip of comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com