Roads are Expensive

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.Did you see this recent story on WAOW.com “Turnout for Transportation“? If you are a regular blog reader, I hope some economic and environmental themes popped into your head. I have been writing about these issues for a few years now.

You might be familiar with “The Concrete Life“, “No More GDP“, and “Terrible Environmental News“. If not, maybe give them a quick glance. In “The Concrete Life” (written 8 years ago), I predicted this:

“Each new mile of pavement is more expensive than the last. Add in inflation and the picture is even worse. The rapidly increasing  cost will end up breaking the bank of local, state, and national funds dedicated to roadways (in my opinion). We see stories of this popping up already and it will only get worse.”

Some people have even likened suburban sprawl to a ponzi scheme. Check out this slideshow/infographic that highlights some of the problems.

Everyone is trying to figure out how to fund our expansive infrastructure. It is well-known that real wages have been declining for decades. Average Americans have less ability to pay higher taxes. Normally, people tend to say, “of course we should have great roads”, but then squabble over paying for said roads. As many people have noted, the proposed wheel tax in Wausau (and potentially Marathon county) is not the best way to fund roads, but it might be the only option available considering various budget and legal constraints.

Has anyone ever wondered if we have built too much? Why are government policies always focused on artificially “stimulating demand” and “building more stuff” in order to make the economy “good”? As we are finding out, building too many roads is getting to be a problem. Paved roads are expensive. If population growth is slowing and we cannot pay for the infrastructure we have, why are we building more?

Consider Japan – an example of the “growth” mindset gone wrong. The population of Japan is declining. Young people are just not that interested in having kids. If there are fewer people, there is no need to build more stuff, yet the economic policy in Japan is framed for expansion. Japan now has the greatest debt to GDP ratio in the world. The government keeps borrowing and spending money to expand an economy that should be naturally contracting. Instead of spending wealth they don’t have building more houses, factories, and roads, perhaps they should be condensing and focusing on other qualities of life that are important. There is more to life than expansion.

Yet, in most of the world, the only goal of economic policy is growth. It is a tough mindset to break, but we should, because it is a sad day when more of the natural world is paved over. Consider the Wausau area. It has sprawled out quite a bit. Most of the time when there is new talk of building and growth, it is at the edge of the metro area, where the land is clear, available, and easy to build upon. It is typically more expensive and complicated to build near the center of the city. So new buildings, gas stations, and strip malls all end up at the edge. This means more traffic and more expensive paved roads to get to the “new growth”. If we are having trouble paying for the roads already, maybe we should reconsider the sprawl?

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Clik here to view.

I am well aware that historically speaking, an expanding city has usually been linked to a more positive future. Building new infrastructure is usually a sign of job growth and future opportunities. That’s history. Going forward, traditional industrial growth might be a net negative for society. We already have pollution problems and if we can’t pay for the new growth, we are going to have financial problems as well. This is especially true if the population levels off or even declines, like in Japan. In an information-based economy, the crucial infrastructure is that which shuttles information around the world. Access to computing power and data as well as moving it around the world is more important than building new strip malls.

If you don’t believe me, read this article about the dire state of malls in the U.S. I grew up in the “era of malls”. It was good. They were useful and still are. However, I am not sentimental about them. If new malls do not make financial sense then perhaps we (as a society) should not be building more of them, instead focusing on the viability of the ones that already exist.

So how do we break out of the “growth” mindset? How do we pay for the roads? Simple questions. Complicated answers. First, leadership from the top would help. If the country replaced GDP as a measure of “how good the economy(society) is”, that would get the ball rolling (no more GDP). Second, maybe some of the far-flung paved country roads should revert to gravel. Or if people want paved roads farther out in the country (excluding farmers), they should pay higher taxes for them (controversial, I know). Third, maybe living in the city can be incentivized. I am not sure how this would work, but maybe mass transit or inner city living could be subsidized in some manner. Maybe more festivals and activities could be planned for the inner city. In this regard, it seems Wausau is generally moving in a good direction.

I never thought I would say this, but I wouldn’t mind if the population was stable or declined a bit. The world is pretty crowded already. If there were fewer people in Wausau 10 years from now, yet there were the same amount of jobs (as a percentage of the population), the same services, same availability of food, energy, and healthcare, then I don’t see a problem. With increasing automation and technological progress, we might even be better off than our ancestors, even with fewer people around.

Have a nice Friday! Meteorologist Justin Loew