I would like to see what could be done to soften the economic impacts on transit agencies, especially on operating costs. I would like to see increased funding to maintain operations, and deny highway funding to cities that are cutting transit service but want more money for highways (OCTA is one of those).

Our infrastructure is quite literally falling apart, which means that among other things freight (one main component in the recent spike in freight costs is the increasing need to maintain eighteen wheelers or VMT upticks due to such things as dilapidated bridge closings) will no longer be able to move in its current manner. Nor will people. Furthermore, most of our foodstuffs are imported as are most other goods, and our whole global system of economic growth is predicated upon GDP (Simon Kuznets: “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income” ) and subsidized-so-it-can-be-cheap consumption of energy. The global production of oil has nearly reached its peak point (some illustrious thinking folk well-connected in the biz argue that it already has in Saudi Arabia), which is going to have extreme ramifications, one of the effects obviously being our society becoming much less global and much more local in nature.

It’s a shame, how those towns beyond a fifty mile proximity to Interstates have been allowed to die (i.e. America’s Heartland). It’s a shame, how both our domestic agricultural and industrial capacity has been so extensively desiccated via outsourcing. And it’s a shame, how our intraurban and Interstate Rail System was destroyed, an act that among others General Motors and Standard Oil were convicted for conspiring against the public’s welfare.

Then again, with trillion dollar deficits on the federal level, what’s another $100 billion or so on keeping our roads functional and our bridges safe? Better than going into Wall Street bonuses.

On the other hand, maybe it’s all just a clever ploy to get more people to walk, bike and use mass transit. After all, once the streets are impassible, people won’t have any other choice.

But our cities are just as guilty of neglecting the roads.

Neglecting pavement maintenance is a bad idea as eventually repair costs skyrocket beyond a certain point. I’ve compiled a resource page on the SO.CA.TA website on this topic: http://socata.net/26.html

People rail about the evils of taxes. Isn’t your car or bike being damaged by potholes a tax when you have to shell out money to fix the damage? It is so shortsighted to underfund this.