This op-ed is the fourth in a five-part series by Strong Towns founder and president, Charles Marohn, first posted on StrongTowns.org beginning on April 12, 2021.
These are investments that leading economists agree will give Americans good jobs now and will pay off for future generations by leaving the country more competitive and our communities stronger…
— The American Jobs Plan
In 2014, I was part of a forum on transportation put on by The Washington Post titled, “America Answers: Fix My Commute.” It featured some of the biggest names in transportation and infrastructure including Anthony Foxx, the Secretary of Transportation, one of his predecessors in the job, Andrew Card, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, and the vice president of the United States at the time, Joe Biden.
To say I was an outlier in this group was an understatement, not only due to my unknown status but also because my views were the antithesis of those presented throughout the day. Vice President Biden gave a rousing performance, without any notes or teleprompter, speaking passionately about the benefits of infrastructure investments, culminating with this classic line familiar to any Strong Towns Podcast listener:
It all comes back to the oldest story in the history of this country. Build, build, build, build. That’s the story.
I agree that is the story, but it’s not a story to automatically be proud of. It’s a story of might and resources elevated over brains and tactics. It’s a story of working twice as hard to achieve half as much… of squandering a great endowment and having not nearly enough to show for it.
There is a noble story of boldness and innovation buried in that narrative, but it’s not rooted in “build, build, build, build.” That version feels like an extension of the insecurity and anxiety from the Cold War, the unchecked momentum of a great rivalry with the Soviet Union—an experience not shared, and thus unfamiliar, to half of today’s Americans. “Build, build, build, build,” feels like an old story, one inherited and then adopted by a now receding generation.
What is the next story?
English physicist Ernest Rutherford is said to have told his colleagues during World War II, “Gentlemen, we’ve run out of money. It is time to start thinking.” It’s fair to suggest that they might have reached this conclusion sooner had they not all been men, but regardless, it is a reminder that a lack of resources, not an abundance, is what spurs innovation in complex systems. This is especially true when those systems are mature, where the momentum of past decisions can make the present paradigm seem self-evident, even when it is a massive experiment being tested on us in real time.
In our case, scarcity has driven innovation, but our new ideas have mostly come in the realm of financialization, modernizing age-old schemes that increase the supply of currency and make it feel like we can get something for nothing. There is no need to reform anything when you can access all the capital you need to allocate toward fixing your prior mistakes. If you believe infrastructure spending is about capital flow and the velocity of money instead of making high-returning investments to build wealth and prosperity, then why labor over changing the system? It already works perfectly for your needs.
For that group of infrastructure advocates, there are plenty of things in the American Jobs Plan that look like reform. There is the emphasis on union jobs and on addressing racial injustice, neither of which require significant changes to programs, funding formulas, or the types of projects built, but they sure make the lack of substantive reform in the American Jobs Act easier to market. (Think I’m wrong? Let’s see what happens with the I-49 Inner City Connector project in Shreveport.)
Ways of transporting oneself that minimize environmental impacts.
1. Walking
2. Jogging
3. Skipping
4. Hopping
…..
849. Electric vehicles#generationE pic.twitter.com/8dRlmfeNzw
— Charles Marohn (@clmarohn) April 6, 2021
Then there is the commitment to electrifying vehicles which, again, is very marketable, but in practical terms is a lot like switching from Coke to Cherry Coke as part of a weight loss plan. We’re not destroying the environment simply because our cars spew carbon; we’re destroying the environment because it requires a significant car trip for modern Americans to do things our ancestors could do with a five-minute walk.
Some may argue that the American Jobs Plan does contain some Strong Towns provisions, such as creating a competitive grant program for ending minimum lots sizes, eliminating mandatory parking requirements, and rolling back prohibitions on multi-family homes. This grant program affirms support for local initiatives already being implemented around the country, but the thimble of resources for such reform is overwhelmed and undermined by the oceans of spending on old-school infrastructure programs.
For example, here’s a recent news report out of Pennsylvania (a state that leads the nation in having the greatest number of deficient bridges), reacting to the American Jobs Plan by highlighting plans to widen 100 miles of highway:
A recent PennDOT study shows a $15 billion need in infrastructure improvements. One major problem is the state has just short of $7 billion in its coffers.
“This is a transportation hub here in Pennsylvania and South-Central Pennsylvania,” [Chris] Drda [Acting District 8 Executive for PennDOT] said.
To highlight the amazing cost of doing infrastructure business, take Interstate 81. The cost of widening a 100-mile stretch of the road from the Maryland line to Interstate 78 is $3 billion. In comparison, the annual statewide program budget is only $1.9 billion.
“There is a significant delta between the available funding and the need,” said Drda.
A small grant encouraging cities to enact local zoning reform—changes our leading cities are already taking—is no compensation for the affirmation the American Jobs Plan delivers to state departments of transportation, as well as others who are wired to undermine these reforms.
Nowhere is the tension over reform more evident than in funding for safety initiatives. Throughout the American Jobs Plan, some version of the word “safe” or “safety” is used 35 times, including in this section about safety for road users:
The plan includes $20 billion to improve road safety for all users, including increases to existing safety programs and a new Safe Streets for All program to fund state and local “vision zero” plans and other improvements to reduce crashes and fatalities, especially for cyclists and pedestrians.
When you’re walking, use crosswalks, wait for walk signals and obey all traffic signals. And let’s all keep our phones down, our heads up and our eyes on traffic.
I have expressed frustration over vision zero programs — or, as my state DOT calls it, “Towards Zero Deaths”, as if it is merely a New Year’s resolution and not the primary justification for their existence. The amount of effort put into shaming pedestrians and cyclists for being distracted by their phones or not wearing bright enough clothing is disgusting. It’s a small pittance, however, compared to the vision zero money routed to traditional stuff like police enforcement, emergency response, and building auto-focused speed enhancements like median barriers, rumble strips, and roadside shoulders.
And this brings me to my core frustration with the American Jobs Plan: the things we most urgently need to do not only don’t require more money, a wave of federal funding run through these legacy programs makes local reform more difficult to accomplish.
For example, in terms of safety, the most important thing we can do is to stop over-engineering local streets. We have witnessed, during the pandemic, how removing the traffic calming of congestion causes more death. Our local streets are overbuilt and designed to be dangerous. The way to fix this is to spend less on each project, not more.
Narrower lanes, no turn lanes, no shoulders, less asphalt, less aggregate, less area to drain all mean lower costs. Cities need lower costs because they are insolvent, because they can’t afford to maintain all the streets they were already induced to build. Local leaders are figuring this out. We should get out of their way and let them fix it instead of giving them more money, with more minimum construction standards, that require them to build deadly streets.
The second most important thing we can do to improve safety is to stop increasing the amount that people drive. Every time we turn a walking trip into a driving trip, we make things more dangerous. Every time we turn a short driving trip into a long driving trip, we make things more dangerous. There is no long-term advantage to our economy—and an overwhelming amount of damage—to continued horizontal expansion of our cities. Why are we sacrificing lives by expanding automobile travel when it also harms our economy? It’s nonsensical.
This is why the idea of “fix it first” should just be shortened to “fix it” and not expanded to “fix it right” (merely another euphemism for expansion), as the American Jobs Plan does. It is unfathomable that we should build another lane of highway, another bridge, another overpass, or any other infrastructure system when the most profligate infrastructure spending bill ever doesn’t even tackle 20% of the backlog of existing road maintenance.
What is missing here is the establishment of any rational feedback loop that would get our infrastructure crisis under control. How do we stop states and localities from taking this surge of spending and using it to build more stuff, which is not only what PennDOT is planning to do, but what every state DOT and most local engineering departments are planning to do? How do we balance supply and demand when the current demand doesn’t come close to paying for the current supply, and nobody in the system seems to care—they just want more?
There was a hint of someone caring when Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whom I’ve said I really like, went on CNBC and suggested that a mileage tax was on the table, a mechanism that not only funds transportation but establishes a feedback loop to balance demand with available supply. There are all kinds of great reasons why a mature transportation system like ours should switch to these kinds of user fees, whether they come in the form of mileage taxes, tolls, or other use-based charges. However, they are not part of the American Jobs Plan. This plan is about “build, build, build, build,” and so Secretary Buttigieg ultimately walked back his earlier mileage tax suggestion.
Where is the urgency for cities and states to lead on this when reforms are difficult, and the federal government routinely shovels you cash through legacy programs to keep things staggering along?
The same runs true for transit, with even graver consequences. The theory of the American Jobs Plan seems to be that investing in transit for commuters, while also expanding highways, bridges, and interchanges, will somehow reduce congestion. Nowhere has this phenomenon ever been observed in real life, despite billions having been spent in its pursuit.
Transit is the prime accelerator of neighborhood wealth creation. While I recognize there are dreams for high-speed rail and other large transit investments (we have our big project wish list here in Minnesota just like everywhere else), these visions are built on the chassis of the automobile transportation system and the disastrous concept of corridor development. Instead, they should be built on a vision of serving neighborhoods as places, providing great transit within these places (streets) and then high-speed connections between them (roads).
Again, on a project basis, spending less would do more. The way to address congestion is to build neighborhoods, not lane miles. Thickening up existing neighborhoods is how cities are going to address their insolvency issues. It is how they will build the capacity to maintain their critical infrastructure, not to mention improve the quality of life for residents. This is starting to happen, but the American Jobs Plan puts the brakes on that momentum. The spending recommits us to the auto-based corridor model, despite some of the marketing.
I could go on this way for a long time. I haven’t even talked about ‘stroads’ yet and the federal responsibility to tame this monster they created. For now, though, let me summarize in this way: Top-down, centralized systems are great at doing the same thing over and over again, at scale. If you want an intercontinental railroad or a national system of waterways and canals, you need some type of coordinated federal approach. If you want to build an interstate system across an entire continent in a generation, you need a federal program. If you want to get millions of American families into a suburban home in a decade or two, you need federal leadership.
Top-down, centralized systems are good at doing these things, but not so good at changing course. They are not good at receiving and responding to feedback because the feedback loops — the distance between the cause of the problem and the pain that is felt — are distant and diffuse. These systems are not great at nuance. At fine-grained action. They are good at standardization, efficiency, and one-size-fits-all. That’s not automatically a bad thing, but it’s not what we need right now.
We built the interstates. We built bridges and interchanges and frontage roads. We built sewer, water, and drainage systems everywhere. We built airports and canals, ports, and landings. We built all of these things, but we now lack the money to maintain them. That is not because we’re not spending enough, it is because we are not making productive use of what we have built. We’re not getting enough of a return out of our investments.
Instead of expanding, our cities need to thicken up. They need to mature to match the level of infrastructure investment they have. Parking lots need to disappear and be replaced with stores and homes. Single-family neighborhoods need to become neighborhoods of duplexes and triplexes. Streets need to be narrowed and speeds slowed to make it easier for people to bike and walk. Neighborhood transit systems, walking, and biking need to replace automobiles as the dominant way of getting around within a place.
All of these things need to happen, but all of them involve difficult, local, nuanced decisions that will vary in scale, intensity, and timing from city to city, from neighborhood to neighborhood. The federal government can be a partner in this, but not by pouring billions into legacy programs. Not before dramatic reform to its own approach.
The next generation of urban development needs to be bottom-up. It needs to be led from our neighborhoods, and oriented toward the day-to-day experiences of people and their urgent needs. The American Jobs Plan not only delays needed reforms, it puts systems ahead of people and politics ahead of place.
Tomorrow I will share my advice for local leaders trying to make their communities into strong towns. There is a lot to do, but it starts with creating a strategy now before the wave of money hits your shores.