Consider, for a moment, a pair of infrastructure projects, each competing for stimulus funds. One project has completed all of its required environmental studies, has acquired all necessary right-of-way, and has signed an agreement with a contractor who will design, build, and operate the project. This project promotes reduced motor vehicle use and denser urban development, both necessary steps to reducing carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels.
The other project has been kicked around for 25 years with no movement. No environmental studies have been completed. Right-of-way has not been acquired, because no final alignment has been settled on. The project, when built, will serve a small number of people, promote continued exurban sprawl in an area already suffering from unending traffic jams, and pave over acres and acres of some of the last greenfield prairie within 100 miles of a major metropolitan area.
Three questions: which project do you think meets the criteria of a "shovel-ready" project? which project meets the criteria of promoting the environment, green-energy technologies, and less dependence on foreign oil? and, of course, which project got more stimulus funding?
The first project in question is the proposed expansion of the Houston MetroRAIL Light Rail system. The second is a segment of the proposed Grand Parkway, a 4th (!!) loop of highway around Houston. The Grand Parkway will get significantly more stimulus funds, because it is considered "shovel-ready", where the light rail project is not. The answer to why can be found
here, on my favorite Houston-related blog, Intermodality. (That's right, suck it Swamplot!)
The short answer is rail and roads are funded by separate agencies, which hold their respective projects to different standards to determine what is shovel-ready, and what ultimately gets funded. For rail, there is an exhaustive process of evaluating your project against potential alternatives, evaluating the risk of going over-budget, and evaluating your project against other proposed rail projects. Then, after all that is done, the Federal Transit Administration can decide it doesn't like your project for absolutely no reason at all, and refuse to fund it. For highway, on the other hand, the process works like this:
Group of 5 dudes appointed by the governor: "Hey, let's build some highways!"
Federal Highway Administration: "Sounds good, let me write you a check!"
That's how you get things that look like this:
In case you can't quite tell what's going on, let me explain: I am standing under an elevated highway. Directly in front of me is a four-lane highway. In the medium distance is a highway that, for some reason, is elevated an extra 100 feet off the ground (this is very common in Houston, by the way). Oh, and behind me? A four-lane feeder road.
This picture could have been taken from just about anywhere in Houston. In fact, here is the view out of the window of my apartment.
Billions of dollars are being funneled through a broken system. The system needs to be changed. Change. I swear I've heard something about that somewhere.
