Infrastructure plan calls for fixing the nation’s existing roads.

[cpzilliacus]

Washington Post: Infrastructure plan calls for fixing the nation's existing roads. Some states are still focused on expansion.

IMO, this is not a very good article for several reasons:

(1) Harmful emissions from internal combustion-powered vehicles is down - a lot - since the 1990's, yet that gets no mention.

(2) Transit agencies (especially those with rail systems) continue to happily build rail extensions and new lines, often at enormous cost, even though they have large (as in expensive) maintenance backlogs.

(3) Building rail transit to get people out of their cars has been a notable failure in most of the United States.  As the Onion famously wrote back in 2000, U.S. drivers are in favor of building transit for other people to ride.

(4) No mention of toll-funded highways, nor of the difference between managed lanes (not congested unless there is a crash) and "free" highways.

(5) No mention of where growth in population and employment is taking place.

[Bruce]

The article highlights WA, and indeed we do have a budget problem. We spent way too much on past expansions that will now bite us in the ass when it comes to debt service and maintenance of our existing infrastructure, so this is a good lesson for the rest of the country.

At the same time, traffic levels in Seattle before the pandemic had been stable for several years despite huge gains in population and jobs, thanks to expanding our transit network (with no funding from the state). So while traffic is the same, increased transit has at least prevented more drivers from overloading the already-congested roadways, which is as good as we can get in this country.

In the next few years, we're probably going to start discussions on how to rebuild much of I-5 through Seattle, since it is starting to show its age. It seems every few weeks an expansion joint gets loose and forces the freeway to be shut down for hours while emergency repairs take place. Not to mention the seismic vulnerability of all the elevated sections. I'd rather save money from not expanding roads into the greenfields to pay for a higher-priority maintenance/preservation project like I-5.

[OCGuy81]

The article highlights WA, and indeed we do have a budget problem. We spent way too much on past expansions that will now bite us in the ass when it comes to debt service and maintenance of our existing infrastructure, so this is a good lesson for the rest of the country.

At the same time, traffic levels in Seattle before the pandemic had been stable for several years despite huge gains in population and jobs, thanks to expanding our transit network (with no funding from the state). So while traffic is the same, increased transit has at least prevented more drivers from overloading the already-congested roadways, which is as good as we can get in this country.

In the next few years, we're probably going to start discussions on how to rebuild much of I-5 through Seattle, since it is starting to show its age. It seems every few weeks an expansion joint gets loose and forces the freeway to be shut down for hours while emergency repairs take place. Not to mention the seismic vulnerability of all the elevated sections. I'd rather save money from not expanding roads into the greenfields to pay for a higher-priority maintenance/preservation project like I-5.

I'd be very curious to see how I-5 can be rebuilt through downtown Seattle.  It's a pretty limited amount of land given water on both sides, plus the seismic issues that you mentioned. 

[TheHighwayMan3561]

(3) Building rail transit to get people out of their cars has been a notable failure in most of the United States.  As the Onion famously wrote back in 2000, U.S. drivers are in favor of building transit for other people to ride.

As I've said a couple times on this board, building all the transit in the world does nothing to eliminate the deep and long-established American stigma that transit is only used by hippies and homeless people. That has to be changed a different way.