I suspect the nation’s demand for solar panels will be met by imports from Germany, and our wind turbines will be made in China

Chinese wind turbine firm plans U.S. plant

Good ideas. I think a certain population threshold needs to be crossed before it becomes really useful. The population where I live is roughly 200,000. Not big enough to justify a rail system. The buses run on bio-fuel and are well utilized during peak times. It seems like much of the day and particularly in the evening (I think service is until midnight) many of them run nearly empty. Don’t know how much that is helping.

I’ve always been an advocate of mass transit and public transportation. There is one aspect of it that is never discussed, the resistance that some neighborhoods have to convenient public transportation. There is an underlying, I’ll call it “classist”, mentality that subways, light rail, trolleys or buses will make it too convenient for “those people” to move into certain neighborhoods. The part of New York City I live in, NE Queens, is a rather inconvenient area for public transportation with either the Long Island Railroad (expensive) or express buses (double the price of a regular bus or subway ride) as the most convenient methods for getting into Manhattan. I believe this was by design to make it less desirable for certain economic groups.

The NIMBY mentality has to be addressed.

Manufacturing jobs are gone. The stock holders and the CEOs have decided on short term profits vs long term growth. They have decided that their corporations have no social responsibility to the US. SO, what happens when, because the higher paying manufacturing jobs have all gone to low wage countries(the perennial call of CEOs who want bigger bonuses and more stock options is that without lower wages the company can’t make a profit-a profit of say 30% rather than a profit of 20% if they paid good wages to their work force)the people of the US, forced into minimum wage jobs due to lack of education or job training, can no longer afford to buy what the company sells? The company goes out of business, the various greedy people who inhabit the upper management ranks get “golden” parachutes, and everyone else gets fucked. The US, over a long slow period, turns into a third world country, the former middle class disappears and you have massive wealth in 1% of the people and abject poverty in 99%. IOW, we become the Haiti of the 21st century. A country full of poor ignorant-30% drop out rate, most kids entering college have to take remedial classes in math and english- people along with a massive military to be used at the beck and call of the mega corps. Welcome to the latest war, brought to you by Exxon-mobil, courtsy of War, Inc.

Plenty of money and lots of jobs can be facilitated by replacement of existing, aged infrastructure. Like redesigning many intersections between rail and roadways from grade crossing to bridge or overpass. This allows for faster speeds and less frequent accidents. There are very clear benefits to all parties: car drivers, commuters, the big rail interests (funny to see you Mr. Buffet), the big construction interests, unions, trucking. I can’t think of anyone who would be against this.

In my city (Chicago), many of the existing bridges and viaducts are rusted to the extent that you can see daylight shining through some of the cracks.

What are the lifespans of all of the bridges crossing the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers? With the current employment situation in the U.S., we should be deficit spending like mad on infrastructure. The level of spending should be equal to TARP.

What do you mean by:

Unfortunately, as long as this country maintains its strong anti-manufacturing policies,

What manufacturing policies are you referring to? I just want to be sure I am understanding your meaning for the rest of the post.

Indeed back in the day this was a serious problem. People say mass-transit as a way to move poor “other” people so they move way from these systems. But at least in the Washington DC metro area living close to the subway is now considered to be worth a high premium.

As the country ages we are going have many people who will want to move into walkable neighborhoods. There will be a lot of older baby boomers who will have trouble maintaining a suburban lawn and driving everywhere due to bad eyesight and slow reflexes. But if everything was easily accessed on foot or with a quick trolley ride they would perfectly capable of living independently.

There are many bad pieces of our manufacturing policy or lack there of. The fact that we basically force employers to cover insanely expensive health care for employees is just one terribly national policy ruining manufacturing in this country. It is tough to compete world wide with that extra 8% of overhead.

There are many different tax breaks that encourage producing overseas.

Growing up in Queens we lived very close to the BMT line. It was an elevated line and was so loud that it would rattle windows and when close to it had to shout to be heard above it. We later moved further out where it was necessary to take a bus to the IND subway line. Much more satisfactory.

Born and raised in DC then moving to Alexandria, back in the day getting around was a snap. In town there were the buses and streetcars and the AB&W bus line served the whole metro area.

I like the way the Mayo Clinic manages to get their people to work-I heard lots of talk about a lite rail system, but as of 2002(my last visit to Rodchester MN) nothing had happened-What happens is that the employee who lives furthest out in whatever direction gets to drive the bus-a regular Grayhound-and picks up workers all along their route into work. I counted about 20 buses parked on the streets around the Mayo Clinic. This is a fine example of a private business finding a solution to a massive traffic problem, one that does not involve govt at all. They also, in order to keep down automobile traffic, run shuttle busses from all the outlying hotels in order to bring patients to the Clinic without having to provide lots of parking. Some companies here in San Antonio do this on a much smaller scale, 12-15 passenger busses. My city provides a park and ride system to buss people to downtown jobs or to big events in the evening, however, while a great many people used it during the summer of very high gas prices, now that gas prices have fallen, people are back in their cars. The city govt attempts, every few months, to bring up lite rail, but the people are not buying it. Too much cost for too few passengers

Lower Wacker Drive being one? That, along with Upper Wacker Drive was quite bad the last time I was in Chicago-about 10 years ago.

Denver area is in the process of trying to get its Mass Trans going. Where it is in operation it is very popular but new lines seem to be having problems with huge cost overruns.

Didn’t Obama talk about infastructure back when he was running for prez? And wern’t stimulus funds supposed to go to infastructure problems? It all just kind of evaporated, no? Our congress(and prez, either party) all talk, zero action-unless of course it would somehow benefit their corporate masters.

Also, Rod. MN was using school busses as city busses(2000) except during the pick up and delivery of kids. Seemed to work pretty good. Also saves the city money on busses

Since you were last here in Chicago (10 years ago), the east-west span of Wacker Drive (from Michigan Ave. to Lake St.) was largely demolished and replaced (both upper and lower levels). The new design corrected many of the blind corners and dangerous intersections. It also allowed for a pedestrian riverwalk along the entire stretch. This project came in underbudget and ontime. The project was headed by a very competent female engineer (I don’t know her name) from the Chicago Department of Transportation.

However, the north-south span of Wacker Drive has not yet been replaced. It remains as horrifying as you remember.

The problem is if you build the system right than the people will come. An area will not have a large density of people willing to use mass transit unless there is already a mass transit system.

Arlington VA build its subway under the main road when the area was in decline and not heavily populated. Now it is one of the only places in the country where there is still a lot of construction to build new living units.

Two points. First, if this is defined as a national security issue, the outsourcing issue could be blunted. We don’t outsource tank and jet fighter building to China. There is not reason we should outsource a sustainable power grid either. Second, mass transit won’t mean anything unless there are jobs people have to use it to get to. We need to re-industrialize our country. We just need to do it in a sustainable way. Unfortunately, this requires a thoughtful, long-term plan, which our elites don’t do anymore.

“Unfortunately, as long as this country maintains its strong anti-manufacturing policies, I don’t see the blue/green alliance manifesting itself in that way.”

Yes, indeed. We’ve regulated ourselves into oblivion. I doubt if it will change anytime soon…except to maybe get worse.

There was a kind of trolley that was proposed for Urbana but was killed by the Republican representative Tim Johnson. Given the layout of that community, it would still make sense. Historically, there were inter-city lines which connected the various cities in central Illinois: Urbana-Champaign, Bloomington-Normal, Decatur, and Springfield. These were done in in much the same way mass transit was killed off in LA and elsewhere.

My understanding is that, many decades ago, industrialists coordinated efforts to kill the construction of mass transit systems in this country so that certain industries could flourish/profit. They screwed the people out of a much better transportation system, but so long as they created jobs in this country, I suppose no one was willing to complain too much.

Then, in the last few decades, industrialists of a later generation used their wealth to co-opt members of our government and get them to put in place shitty policies that have made manufacturing overseas infinitely more profitably (see Jon’s comment @ 8).

I think Jon’s piece here is very thought provoking. Now that the problems are becoming far too bad for Americans to tolerate any longer, we should be thinking about ways for the people to coordinate in order to demand better manufacturing policies (including health care reform!) and to restart the construction of mass transit systems as the solution to problems that were created by the killing of their construction in the first place.

“mass transit won’t mean anything unless there are jobs people have to use it to get to.”

Exactly.

Speaking of mass transit, what about Harry’s high speed train from LA to Las Vegas (The Pork Barrel Express). A lot of good that will do in a recession.

There were some road projects where I live, including intercepting sewer replacement and repaving of Sheridan Road. But we need bigger (Roosevelt style) projects, like bridges, tunnels, bike trails, and rapid transit systems.

You all should check out the website http://www.recovery.gov which gives lots of information on how the stimulus money has been spent so far, including breakdown of projects by state.

deficit spending like mad? I don’t think so. At least not any more than we are already.

You mistake “anti-manufacturing policies” for over-regulation. In fact, the opposite was true, allowing US firms to ship jobs over to countries with weaker environmental laws, quality control, job safety, and workers’ rights. If the US had demanded comparable regulation for companies going abroad, many of them would have stayed with their jobs here.

My point is that a lot has been focused on the national level. I think this is a great place for labor, progressives, and environmentalists to work to get something done at the local level.

One of the less known aspects about transit in smaller cities and towns is that it was originally implemented by the power companies in a competitive effort to sign up municipalities to their grid. The city got the electric trolley transit for free, the power company got exclusive rights to customers in the city and also a way of utilizing excess production.

That happy relationship ended with the growth in the use of automobiles after World War II. Small towns and cities took up or paved over the trolley tracks, there were some experiments with electric buses, and finally the power companies briefly went to diesel buses before selling of the transit service to private companies or municipalities to run.

The truth is that transit never was expected to operate without subsidies until the 1960s,

Now we should insist that fossil-fuel-powered vehicles operate without subsidies. No highway funds, no airport funds, no Corps of Engineer maintenance of inland shipping channels, and in a lot of places no Amtrak.

The subsidy argument is a false one that obscures how subsidized the current transportation system is.

One word: Germany.

A huge manufacturing powerhouse and it has much tougher regulations than the USA.

We tax capital gains about 15% and work at roughly 35%. Guess why our big companies (AIG, Goldman, Citi) were all focused on capital gains for so long.

The curious thing was that outsourcing didn’t always make economic sense and wasn’t insanely profitable at all. Some companies moved abroad defensively because everyone else was doing it. Not to would leave them looking old fashioned and make them more vulnerable to takeovers.

The curious thing was that outsourcing didn’t always make economic sense and wasn’t insanely profitable at all.

I realize that this is a bit simplistic, but I think it’s correct in general terms.

In the ’80s, the move was to ship manufacturing to Japan, Taiwan and other places.

Once the Berlin Wall fell and then the Soviet Union collapsed, fears about factories in other countries being taken over by governments vanished. Then the Chinese got very smart.

So who won the Cold War again?

I think Warren Buffet was a complete genius for purchasing Burlington Northern RR. He also had the foresight to cultivate a relationship with then Senator Obama.

I’m convinced that there will be future federal funds available for creation of intercity high speed trains.

Check out this map of the existing rail lines in the U.S., color coded showing the ownership: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Class1rr.png

There will definitely be a huge need for green manufacturing goods, wind turbines, solar panels, energy efficient appliances, smart equipment, etc, but without a change to our foolish national policies, which disadvantage our manufacturing base, I see no reason why these “green” products are anymore likely to be made here than current less-than-green products.

From what I understand, US companies like First Solar and Evergreen Solar are already looking to move factories to Germany and China.

So who are the potential allies in government who would support legislation to get things done, i.e. to change policies and give our manufacturing base an advantage? Shouldn’t we be contacting them and supporting them?

It is should not be either or. You should try to making change at the the national level but you can also bring important improvements to the local level.

Yawn. There was never any money slated to that route, since it had never been submitted to the Commission that prioritized and approved the routes. There were about 20 other routes that would have received stimulus money…including one that ran from Virginia, through the Carolinas, Mississippi, to New Orleans…then to Houston. And another that ran through the Mississippi Valley. Jindal, who freaked about the HSR never mentuioned that New Orleans would have been a central hub of the system.

Yet it was Republicans friom these States turning apoplectic about “pork-barrel” Harry and the Disney-Vegas Express.

Designated High Speed Rail Routes in the USA.

Not sure you addressed my point with the “shouldn’t be either/or national/local” assertion. I never said it should be about either/or national/local.

First, I live in Knoxville, TN, where we can’t even get the flipping local government to give us decent sidewalks (any sidewalks), forget mass transit. And that’s the way the people here seem to want it.

Second, much of the reason I come to FDL is that many things can only be accomplished at the national level. In your comment @ 8, you give an example of how a “national policy [has been] ruining manufacturing in this country.”

At the national level, we can push for and get more of things like H R 3585, the Solar Technology Roadmap Act, intended “to guide and provide for United States research, development, and demonstration of solar energy technologies, and for other purposes,” reported by the House Energy and Environment Subommittee and referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources last month.

Let me repeat my questions @ 33:

So who are the potential allies in government who would support legislation to get things done, i.e. to change policies and give our manufacturing base an advantage? Shouldn’t we be contacting them and supporting them?

If you’re not proposing that we take action to push representatives to do more things like this and to support them when they do move on H R 3585 and similar efforts, then what’s the point of the post?

Reread your post and see your point. You’re saying that efforts at the national level focus on solar panels and wind turbines (things that don’t have to be imported, though they probably will be), but that there are opportunities to do things at the local level that are both environmentally sound and good for jobs in this country. You make an excellent point!

I wonder if there’s a way to ask/push members of Congress to introduce into the Solar Technology Roadmap Act (mentioned @ 36, w/link) a provision that would require all solar panels that will be subsidized by taxpayers to be “Made in USA.”