Fall of the Dutch

[kandrathe]

Do investments in transportation infrastructure impact quality of life? Probably - although the quality of life in LA or Houston is not significantly higher than anywhere else. Do they impact GDP? In some cases, but not everywhere.

Yes. :-) I do agree that many projects are done more for political purposes than utility. It does show how even what might be an obvious example of how public money might be spent for productivity gains is fraught with the peril of wasteful political influences. The bridges to no where not withstanding...

Commuters spend the same number of hours at the office regardless of their length of commute, so their personal contribution to their employer is the same regardless of the traffic jam.

I disagree with this. My experiences as a worker and as a boss tend to support that people attempt to arrive and depart at the same times each day, and their excess commute (beyond normal) robs the business of the time on either end. As a parent who picks up at the end of the day, I need to leave early enough to avoid congestion to ensure I am there on time. So, for an hour commute, I need to leave 1.5 hours before the pick up deadline (6:00pm). Being that I live in Minnesota, my company also suffers from commute robbing time on bad weather days. An hour commute may take 2 or 3 hours, and people show up late to the office. I would say that a major challenge for a businesses in commute heavy cities is to get the expected productivity from their workers (also setting aside the physical and mental health detriments of long commute on worker productivity).

But in my view, for many jurisdictions transportation expansion (note: not just roads - rail, transit, bicycle, air) in the name of GDP is their #1 waste of public funds. And it's orders of magnitude larger than fraud, corruption, tax evasion or even the war on drugs.

I can see (and have seen) that this very much can be the case when the proposed project is not based on need/demand, but rather on wishful thinking (if we build it they will come). In fact, my wife and I were commenting on that this morning. We were driving alone in the HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lane while the low occupancy commuters were bumper to bumper. Great for us, however, it was based on the assumption that people would double/triple up and form car pools. Its been 10 years now, and it just doesn't happen. So, they now issue an electronic pass which allows the wealthy driver the opportunity to drive in the commuter lane at a high price. The commuter lanes are still mostly empty during rush hours. Then, there is the cost to the highway patrol to enforce that the lane remain empty, except for valid wealthy people or the rare HOV.

In my locality we are having a debate currently involving whether and how our taxes would help to foot a large portion of the bill to build a new football stadium. At the same time, we've suffered three years of cost cutting and underfunding public systems to meet budget pressures with the biggest amount of shortage taken out of K-12 education.

The people need to decide whether entertainment trumps our obligations to K-12. I like football, and I'd be sad to see them go. But, it is a business, and I'm against this recurring subsidy given to the business of professional sports. Whereas, the things that would benefit the people more than the entertainment from those 8 games played in the stadium per year would be things like educated children, or a transit system that would allow people to get to their jobs.