And If the Whole Country is Brankrupt…


Ron has included links on several posts to a warning cry being issued by the Comptroller General (he spoke at City Club on this topic last year):

Economics is even less sexy. But here is the comptroller of the General Accounting Office of the United States of America in his around-the-nation plea for fiscal responsibility. This link has a video you can watch, on the right hand side of the page. It aired on CBS’ 60 Minutes on Sunday evening:
http://www.
cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml

How does that affect Portland area transportation projects and our need to remain an economically viable region? What projects do you think are a must-have and which are just a nice-to-have. Other nations have already found less to like about the United States; that is mainly why the US dollar has declined a good 33 per cent in the last five years. Do we dare risk continued excessive (IMO) spending?

He suggested we elevate this question to the level of a post.

If our region had to go it alone without Federal funding for transportation, how would we fare?


10 responses to “And If the Whole Country is Brankrupt…”

  1. Well, the CRC project (as we know it) would go away, instead we’d find a way to keep the current bridge in service as long as we could… (I think that is a good thing actually.)

  2. the left-leaning Brookings Institution

    That pretty much sums it up. The voices included in mainstream media’s political debate range from conservative to wacko right-wing. Not just ideologically conservative, but conservative in the more personal sense of staying inside the box. If one assumes nothing much should change, that nothing much will change, then of course nothing much does change. It will take a crisis that forces people out of their self-satisfied state to really deal with issues where the solutions are as disruptive as this.

    In 30 years a large portion of the baby boomers are no longer going to be driving automobiles. At least not on roads with speed limits of 45-70 mph. So they will either use transit or cabs.

    If you were to apply the same “chicken little” approach to transit funding being applied to medicare you would talk about the para-transit funding crisis. The promise of door-to-door transit service for those who need it is going to be very expensive to fulfill. And realistically, how many spaces can you make for wheel chairs on a fixed route bus?

    If you go to King City and see people arriving to do their shopping in golf carts, you may be looking at our real future. Perhaps there should be an effort to dedicate ROW to light vehicles like Segways, powered wheel chairs, golf carts etc. You really can’t mix large quantities of them with pedestrians. They aren’t safe mixed with multi-ton automobiles and trucks.

  3. “If you go to King City and see people arriving to do their shopping in golf carts, you may be looking at our real future. Perhaps there should be an effort to dedicate ROW to light vehicles like Segways, powered wheel chairs, golf carts etc. You really can’t mix large quantities of them with pedestrians. They aren’t safe mixed with multi-ton automobiles and trucks. ”

    I’ve thought of that, too, Ross. Of course we need big, wide, heavy duty paving if people drive around in their heavy cars, but I see a new trend of lighter vehicles–moving people in something other than 2-ton tanks. There are GEM cars, electric bikes, motorized bicycles, golf carts. I think people would use these more if they could get around legally and safely.

    Just had a thought. Many suburban neighborhoods have incorporated greenways into their land use planning–could not some paved trail be added in for other vehicles? Animal friendly,too? While working at the coast I noted that there are now three communites seriously in line for green energy: Besides Reedsport’s wave project, Newport wants one, too–and Astoria is looking into a windfarm (which I suggested to them five years ago.) The whole coastline is windy enough that greenpower could be so common that plug in EV’s catch on–even smaller ones that could use a small path. I think individual power poles could even have a windgenerator on top and a plug on the pole. I’ve seen GEMs in use in Brookings and Cannon Beach so far. I have a vision for an electric bus–mainly a long fiberglass tube–that could carry sixteen or twenty people. Wouldn’t want a semi to plow into it, though. Bicyclin paths could be made a little bit wider in anticipation od such.

    So is fear of deficit spending a “chicken little” mentality? There is a website called “dailyreckoning.com” that has been issuing dire warnings of fiscal collapse in the US, which is why they promote international investing. They predicted (accurately) the rise of gold prices; they predicted a mortgage lending crisis; they predicted the dumping of government bonds by foreign central banks which is happening. They predicted a housing price bubble–widespread in the US but not affecting Oregon at this time. So far, the US stock maket has been climbing, though and I guess the deficit is shrinking. We may dodge a bullet.

    But in transportation issues costs are not measured only in dollars. They are measured also by how lives are changed while new strategies are being implemented. EG, rebuilding the I-5 will result in massive traffic jams for as long as it continues. Does making people mad–and destroying their problem solving ability–produce a net gain?

    Lastly it is true that the retirement of baby boomers will be a big deomgraphic chnage. Will they need cab rides, wheelchair occupancy, lift vans, etc. to the point it is a crisis? Well, retirement places could have some nurses around couldn’t they. And medical technology is advancing to where a lot of things that used to cripple people can be treated–at least forestalling the ultimate physical demise of the BB deneration. By then Chris will have figured something out.

  4. “So far, the US stock maket has been climbing, though and I guess the deficit is shrinking. We may dodge a bullet.”

    The Dow Jones industrial average now has already surpassed the point it reached in 1929, just before the stock market crash.

    Considering the fact that all of TriMet’s big projects have been very capital-intensive, Portland wouldn’t be able to embark on any massive transit projects in the event of a fiscal meltdown. We can definitely count out buying new rolling stock for MAX, but we may still be able to purchase new buses. All of that though, depends on ridership, which may also may go down in the case of a fiscal downturn.

  5. If our region had to go it alone without Federal funding for transportation, how would we fare?

    Probably focus on maintenance and demand management rather than new road and rail projects. (This might be a good thing.) To the extent there were any extensions to rail transit, they probably would be in short segments. We could still build or expand rail along tollway facilities, or create a busway on the tollway and operate a BRT line with toll revenue.

    A combination of tolling and street maintenance fees could cover all maintenance needs, along with any small-scale road improvement projects that might be needed.

    Assuming we still have Metro and (by the time this disaster hits) a long history of intergovernmental cooperation among cities and counties in the region, we’d probably do better than a lot of other regions at coordinating regional road and rail improvements.

  6. If our region had to go it alone without Federal funding for transportation, how would we fare?

    Well, if our region never had federal transportation funding, we probably wouldn’t have freeways. We might not have light rail either, but that could be OK, since one of the reasons for building them is to “compete” with freeways. In addition, if the lack of federal funding also included oil defense, we probably wouldn’t need light rail to attract people away from cheap gas.

  7. If you need new funding you open the marketplace to others and allow private financing to take over. But that should be done now.
    MW

  8. If our region had to go it alone without Federal funding for transportation, how would we fare?

    …the CRC project (as we know it) would go away…
    So would the Sellwood Bridge project. My guess is we’ll have the current bridge in its current condition until it’s too unsafe for anything, or falls down. Unless the County places it above everything else for funding (libraries, health clinics, after-school programs, jails, etc), or the county gets a windfall revenue increase, or voters approve a 100% local funding package. At Monday night’s meeting, some materials indicated a “middle ground” bridge could cost anywhere from $260 million to $449 million. Those are considered low-confidence, low-ball numbers.

    Considering the fact that all of TriMet’s big projects have been very capital-intensive, Portland wouldn’t be able to embark on any massive transit projects in the event of a fiscal meltdown. We can definitely count out buying new rolling stock for MAX, but we may still be able to purchase new buses.
    Actually, we’d probably be riding the 1400s-1900s for a very long time. Much of the money for bus replacements comes from Federal grants.
    Also, many of the smaller systems and intercity routes with no local tax authority or are Federal grant recipients for rural transit service would cease to operate (unless they subsequently get a local revenue source)… much of the money for that comes from other Federal grants.

    All of this was from the top of my head… but it doesn’t paint a very good picture unless you’re anti-transit; or the flip-side of that: an activist up to the challenge of supporting local tax increases for transit.

  9. Michael Wilson Says:

    If you need new funding you open the marketplace to others and allow private financing to take over. But that should be done now.
    MW

    Hey MW – This isn’t a free-market blog. You don’t think anyone besides me would support that! :o hehee.

    Atlas will shrug, we’ll fight a war in the next melt down. There’s no excess capitol to fund a change of course as happened in the depression. Even though FDR managed to decrease employment even more, turn the economy into a more unbalanced mess, and he still got the mythic status of saving the country. The next president that deals with that won’t have it so easy because we’re a zillion times more unbalanced and weaker.

    I’d be hard pressed to imagine we’d even stay a country. The mid-west isn’t really on good terms with the way the west works, the south deep down is still looking for any excuse to leave the union still, and these types of grievances are always taken care of by a pissed off minority of people. If there is a fiscal meltdown then there is a STRONG possiblity that a minority (just like those that started the American revolution) will kick off another one.

    Just research and reach out to those that are truly pissed and one might ponder what would happen further than the petty, we’ll not have enough funding for MAX equipment. The US fiscal situation declines too much and it is going to go WAY past funding issues, there will be general unrest, and the rest of the world is really gonna take a kick in the ass too.

    China’s economy will practically sink, Europe would fall into severe funding issues themselves and in addition will probably start an arms race or something because I’d bet we’d withdraw from the land of the EU. The middle east would start staving to death without monies being spent on oil since the population there is unsupportable without oil funds. Mexico would fall the short distance it rose into a devalued peso and poverty would worsen (as if it could). South America would probably rise to become a power (parts that is).

    Funding is the least of my concerns in another “Depression” or serious “fiscal meltdown”.

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