99% Invisible - 227- Public Works

Episode Date: September 7, 2016

Infrastructure makes modern civilization possible. Roads, power grids, sewage systems and water networks all underpin society as we know it, forming the basis of our built environment … at least when they work. As Henry Petroski documents in The Road … Continue reading →

It really is almost everything. Infrastructure is just about everything that makes civilization physically possible. Roads, bridges, water supply, sewage removal, dams, and so forth. The physical part of civilization is the infrastructure. That's Henry Petrosky. Well, my name is Henry Petrosky. I'm a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University. He's written a number of books about catastrophic failures in engineering and also one about the history of the toothpick, so he's one of us.

His most recent book is all about infrastructure. The name of the book is The Road Taken, the history and future of America's infrastructure. A couple weeks ago, I interviewed Dr. Petrosky about his book and the state of infrastructure in the US. The first of many things that I learned that shocked me was that the word infrastructure itself is actually kind of new to English. What we call infrastructure today used to be called public works and in America, public works was probably a familiar term up until the 1980s.

But public works became a term closely associated with what was called pork barrel, which was also considered a rather pejorative term, because it had to do with building things that were considered unnecessary or wasteful. Pork Barrel is government spending push forward by a Congressperson to solely benefit the people in their home district. It was associated with politics that was tipped for tat. You vote for my pork, I'll vote for yours. But the connection between public works and government corruption got even worse than

trading votes. It reached its peak in 1973. There was a major scandal that one of our vice presidents of the United States had to resign, Spiro Agnew, because he basically was taking money for road contracts in his home state of Maryland. So in the 1980s, when shrinking government was becoming all the rage and pork barrel in earmarks were our biggest enemy after the Soviets, of Maryland. So in the 1980s when shrinking government was becoming all the rage and pork barrel and earmarks were our biggest enemy after the Soviets of course. The term public works fell out of fashion. So infrastructure became a term that replaced public works generally. But the term was still so new that in the 1980s the Wall Street Journal put infrastructure within quotation marks.

Since infrastructure is the physical part of civilization, it's hard to generalize which government body or private party is responsible for each individual part of it. So in our conversation, we tend to focus on the big one. Well, let's take roads. We tend to think of roads, especially highways, as one of the wonderful things that the federal government does. Well, that's pretty much wrong. Roads today in the United States are largely the responsibility of municipalities and

states. One of the reasons that it's complicated like this is that the federal government is not authorized by the Constitution to build roads or bridges or even fixing them up by itself. It has to go through the states. Article 1 section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states that the federal government can build post roads, meaning routes for the post office to operate effectively, but no other kinds of roads are specified. In fact, in 1817, when a bill was passed by Congress that approved the funding

of internal improvements in the country like roads and canals, it was vetoed by then President James Madison because he felt it was unconstitutional. And he should know because he wrote the Constitution. The federal government can give awards to the states, it can give grants to the states or municipalities, but it can't do it itself. But what the feds can do is put a tax on gasoline to raise money for roads, which they then give to the states and cities. This has been the case since the Revenue Act of 1932, which was passed by Herbert Hoover who raised taxes on pretty much everything. Presently it's 18.4 cents per gallon, and that gives the federal government about $30 billion

a year to distribute to the states, and that distribution, the federal government exercises some control and enables it to provide some standardization to the roads, which I consider a good thing. Me too. Because you don't really want to drive from one state to another and find that the roads are completely different. It was the federal government that brought all the states into unification with the colors of the lines on the roads. Yellow lines divide traffic going different ways, white dashes divide lanes going the same

way. Yellow lines divide traffic going different ways white dashes divide lanes going the same way the federal government making the money contingent on following a standard is what made that happen. But the thirty billion dollar federal highway trust fund which would be to increase the gasoline tax. It hasn't been increased since 1993, which is quite a while. Because the federal gas tax has been so stagnant, the states take it upon themselves to levier their own state gas taxes and fund their road projects that way. Increasing the federal gas tax is not popular, so politicians have trouble doing it. But even if they could, it isn't a great solution. Obviously, if you're going to depend upon the tax on gasoline

per gallon for replenishing the fund, then you have to project how many gallons of gasoline are going to be used. And whether that volume of consumption is going to be used and whether that volume of consumption is going to be steady or increased. And generally, we expect things like that to increase with time. Right now, people are driving more electric and hybrid vehicles than ever before. They still use the roads, but they spend less money at the gas pump. So, pre-as-owners may be

saving the environment, but they are mooching off our roads. It is so hard to do the right thing. So now there's a notion to separate the collecting of taxes needed to maintain the road from the consumption of gasoline. Instead of taxing the fuel that's used, you tax the mileage that the vehicle travels on state roads regardless of whether it uses fuel or not. And this can be done in a variety of ways. At present, there are a number of pilot programs that are trying this out. There are pilot programs that involve self-reporting the number of miles you drive.

But the obvious solution is to have a GPS-based tracking device inside each car. And we'll see if that goes anywhere. Because if you're someone who gets freaked out about the constitutionality of the federal government building roads, I'm going to guess that you're not going to be too keen on the federal government installing a tracking device in your car to see how many miles you drive. I suspect it will take at least a decade

to replace the gas tax entirely, but it will probably come. Infrastructure is all about choices. When a new bridge is proposed, there are countless discussions about whether the bridge should be purely functional and therefore presumably cheaper, or if it should be a signature piece of architecture that attracts international attention. There are cases to be made on either side. I'm a signature man myself. But even mundane features like roads involve

choices that reverberate for decades. Most roads today that aren't interstate roads are made of asphalt. One of asphalt's advantages, of course, is that it's seamless. There is a real pleasure in driving on a new, smooth, black asphalt road. Plus, asphalt can be laid down quickly, it's relatively cheap, and it's easy to patch and repair. The downside is, it's not especially durable. You actually have to patch and repair it quite a lot. Alternatively, you can build a much more durable concrete road, but concrete doesn't offer that smooth, seamless ride that asphalt does, because physics. With concrete, we need what are so-called expansion joints. It would appear to be cracks,

but what are really deliberate lines cut into the concrete to allow it to crack in a controlled way. The cracks are there so that the road doesn't break into pieces when the concrete contracts and expands due to big fluctuations in temperature. But the tires of a vehicle going over them make a noise and the vehicle feels it. When you're driving on a concrete road, it sounds like, Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, and the ride is not as smooth or as quiet as it can be on well-laid asphalt. In addition, concrete roads are more expensive, they're more expensive to repair, and they take longer. But they aren't as prone to potholes and can last a lot longer than asphalt roads.

So decisions have to be made. Do we go with the cheaper, quicker, easier method and save money now, or go with a more expensive slower and less pleasing method at hope to save money on repairs and replacement costs over time? Since so many of these decisions are made in a political context by people who know that they are going to probably move on before the repaying has to be done, will generally opt for the lesser expensive choice, which means asphalt. Asphalt is simply cheaper than concrete, and therein is one of the main reasons that we have

so much asphalt in this country. But there is a more radical choice. In Montpellier-Vermont, there is a road called Bliss Road, which was in a terrible state of disrepair for many years. Until finally, in 2009, the city decided just to unpave the road, turn it into a dirt and gravel road. And since then, 27 states have also unpaved some of their roads for the same reason. I wondered if this was a clever solution or just a demoralizing defeat. I've heard about that and it does seem like a pretty clever solution. It's probably not a very popular solution among the paving contractors, for example.

It would depend on the nature of this road. If this is a road that doesn't have a specially heavy traffic, not a lot of heavy truck traffic, it might work from an engineering point of view. When the Eastern span of the Bay Bridge was about to open in 2013, they set aside a day for pedestrians to walk the bridge. Much like people did in 1883 when the Brooklyn Bridge was opened, I was all set to bring my kids and celebrate this new, massive piece of infrastructure. But because of last minute repairs, the event

was canceled, and the bridge opened to traffic with much less public involvement in the fanfare. And I really didn't get a sense that people were all that upset about it. We collectively just don't have the feeling that infrastructure warrants celebration or a sense of pride like we once did. I asked Dr. Prachoski, why he thought that is? Oh, I think we, the electorate, has gotten mentally lazy about the infrastructure like we have about a lot of things. We tend to focus on what's of immediate concern to us. We might worry more about our driveway than the highway that is nearby. I do think that celebratory events are important and that do help generate that pride and

almost responsibility because everybody is a part of all this. Different things that we vote for and pay for in our taxes and fees, we're really part owner of all that stuff and we should worry about it as much as we do our our neighborhood. What do you think about the idea of reclaiming the term public works, you know, to reflect the fact that it is owned by all of us and that it is public? That's a good idea. I haven't given it a great deal of thought, but that would make it more explicit. It's for the public and by the public in a way. Infrastructure is such a, what is it, a Latinate word that makes it more abstract and removed. So, yeah, that's

an interesting idea. Good. Well, I just thought it out. Oh good, I'm, well, excellent. I have a proposal to send out into the world. 99% invisible is Sam Greenspan to Lady Hall, Kurt Colstad, Terran Maza, Katie Mingle, Avery Truffleman, Cherifusef, and me Roman Mars. Special thanks to Oliver Assis for answering some questions about pavement I had on Twitter. We use music this week from the trifecta of 99PI All Stars.

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