Vladimir Putin Thread

Not in Alaska you don't.

Now Putins criminal plan is to fix Russian problems...

Condition & Capacity

There are over 4 million miles of public roadways in the United States carrying people and goods to their destinations every day. However, these roadways are expected to withstand an ever-increasing volume of traffic each year, with vehicle miles traveled reaching more than 3.2 trillion in 2019, an 18% increase from 2000. Unfortunately, the growing wear and tear to our nation’s roads has left 43% of our public roadways in poor or mediocre condition, a number that has remained stagnant over the past several years. Of note, the vast majority of roads in poor and mediocre conditions tend to be on urban and rural collectors and the non-interstate system, while the interstate system tends to be in good condition. Overall, our deteriorating roads are forcing the nation’s motorists to spend nearly $130 billion each year on extra vehicle repairs and operating costs. Even more troubling is that the number of vehicle miles traveled on roads in “poor” condition has risen from 15% to more than 17% over the last decade.

Congestion and Reliability

In the years following the 2008 economic recession, congestion increased by 1% to 3% annually and continues to outpace population growth. In fact, 47% of the nation’s urban interstates are experiencing congestion during peak hours, and 30% of trips taken on the nation’s roads are impacted by severe or extreme congestion. Compounding the problem has been the growth of transportation network companies (TNCs) or ride-sharing services, which initial studies have shown can increase congestion in urban areas. For example, studies have shown that TNCs have accounted for 52% of vehicle delays in San Francisco alone. With estimates that ridesharing trips can reach 97 million daily by 2030, congestion concerns will continue to grow.

In 2017, congestion caused urban Americans to travel an extra 8.8 billion hours and purchase an extra 3.3 billion gallons of fuel. This congestion costs the nation $166 billion each year, or approximately $1,080 annually in wasted time and fuel for the average auto commuter. This is additional spending to the money already spent on vehicle repair costs due to the condition of the roadways. However, as every lane-mile of road costs approximately $24,000 annually in operation and maintenance, roadway expansion can be more costly and less efficient than operational changes. In fact, in many cases, roadway expansion can lead to induced demand and further sprawl.

Our nation’s highways and roads move 72%, or nearly $17 trillion, of the nation’s goods; therefore, consumers, industry, and the traveling public require reliable and consistent travel times.

While everyday congestion remains common in and around many U.S. cities, unexpected congestion is highly troubling for commuters and freight movement. Without consistent, reliable travel times due to irregular and unpredictable backups, it is more difficult for the public and shippers to plan their trips. Even after accounting for unexpected crashes, bad weather, special events, or other irregular congestion, the average American is spending 54 hours each year in traffic congestion, up from 42 hours in 2014. If these trends continue, on average across the U.S., a 60-minute trip is expected to take 106 minutes in 2039. While the Federal Highway Administration is now encouraging agencies to adopt travel time reliability measures to better manage and operate transportation systems, work still needs to be done to create a national database.



Funding & Future Need

The U.S. has been underfunding its roadway maintenance for years, resulting in a $786 billion backlog of road and bridge capital needs. The bulk of the backlog ($435 billion) is in repairing existing roads, while $125 billion is needed for bridge repair, $120 billion for targeted system expansion, and $105 billion for system enhancement (which includes safety enhancements, operational improvements, and environmental projects). However, in 2017, federal, state, and local governments spent just $177 billion on roads and bridges, with an increasing focus on operations and maintenance needs. As roads age and deteriorate, the most recent data estimates that over 62% of roadway spending was directed toward system preservation, a 3% increase from the Federal Highway Administration’s previous reporting period. Therefore over the next 20 years, the projected spending is estimated at $41 billion. However, the funding required to rehabilitate pavement and other operational conditions will average $53 billion annually. We need to increase current spending levels by 29% to address the current and future backlogs.

Federal investment in roads has historically been paid for from a dedicated, user fee-funded source, the Highway Trust Fund. Unfortunately, the Highway Trust Fund has been teetering on the precipice of insolvency for nearly 15 years due to the limitations of its primary funding source, the federal motor fuels tax. The tax of 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents for diesel has not been raised since 1993, and inflation has cut its purchasing power by 40%. Additionally, new vehicle fuel economy for passenger vehicles has increased by 11 miles per gallon between 1993 and 2017, further reducing revenue. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2022 the Highway Trust Fund is projected to have a $15 billion deficit as current spending levels exceed revenues from user fees that supply the fund.

Encouragingly, some state lawmakers are helping reverse losses in the federal gas tax purchasing power by making the decision to raise or reform state gas taxes. Since 2010, 37 states have raised or reformed their gas taxes either through legislative action or automatic formulas that regularly adjust the gas tax rate. Furthermore, in 2019 alone, voters in 19 states approved $9.6 billion in one-time and recurring revenue through ballot initiatives. In fact, in 2018 alone, states spent $151.8 billion on state-owned roads, up 9% from the previous year.

States are also exploring other revenue sources for funding road investment, including mileage-based user fees. With continued improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency and the popularity of hybrid and electric vehicles, mileage-based user fees could present an opportunity for a long-term funding alternative to the motor fuels tax. However, while legislative and voter action has allowed some states to maintain or increase local sources of roadway funding, federal funding remains a significant portion of overall road funding. Put another way, federal partnership for roadway infrastructure is still required to maintain and modernize the system. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a sharp decline in vehicle miles traveled and therefore gas tax receipts in 2020, and the full impact of this revenue loss for state transportation budgets could be as much as $37 billion over 2020 and 2021.



Public Safety

While traffic fatalities increased annually in the early part of the last decade, they have been declining since 2017. Unfortunately, 36,096 people died on the nation’s roadways in 2019, with an increasing proportion of those fatalities suffered by non-motorists, such as pedestrians. In fact, in 2019 over 6,000 pedestrians were killed, marking a 60% increase of pedestrian fatalities from 10 years prior and the highest number since 1988. Additionally, the overall fatality rate in rural areas continues to be disproportionately higher than the fatality rate on all other roadways, and it is estimated that roadway design features are likely a contributing factor in approximately one-third of traffic fatalities. Investments to widen the lane, shoulder, and clearance widths, as well as introducing more center lane rumble strips, lane markings, and sidewalks are infrastructure improvements that could reduce traffic fatalities.

The National Safety Council attributes the recent decline in traffic fatalities to the implementation of several risk mitigation actions over the last several years. For example, since 2016, 10 cities have embraced Vision Zero models, and more than 30 other cities have joined the Vision Zero Network, which is an alliance of communities committed to making streets safer by taking actions such as redesigning areas that have a history of high crashes and lowering speed limits where possible. Further action from policymakers and communities focused on reducing traffic fatalities through infrastructure, combined with vehicles that are becoming safer through advances in technologies, could reduce the severity of future crashes or prevent them altogether. In fact, some estimates have found that new technologies such as connected vehicles can cut fatal crashes by as much as 86%.


Resilience & Operations & Maintenance

The increase in severe weather events is damaging key roadways that serve as community lifelines, while simultaneously increasing maintenance needs, interrupting the normal operation of the nation’s roads, creating delays, and negatively impacting the economy. For example, rising temperatures are estimated to add approximately $19 billion to pavement costs each year by 2040.21 Therefore, engineers are increasingly incorporating the resilience of the road network during the materials selection and design process and using data-driven analysis to make investments. Furthermore, the Federal Highway Administration now requires state transportation departments and planning organizations (DOTs and MPOs) to consider resilience in the planning process and include resilience considerations in asset management plans.

States are also developing asset management plans to define strategic processes for operating, maintaining, and improving their road networks. Effective plans focus on engineering and economic analysis to identify a structured sequence of maintenance, preservation, repair, rehabilitation, and replacement while promoting actions that will help optimize their networks within the available funding constraints. Every state DOT is now required to have an asset management plan in order to receive federal funding, although many of these plans still do not cover the majority of roadways, as the plans are only required to cover the National Highway System. While asset management plans still have room for improvement, when paired with life-cycle cost analysis, they are helping states set priorities and determine where investments should be made to improve the overall system. Repaving and surface treatments might improve a roadway in the short term, but because underlying roadways continue to age, replacing the road might be a more effective solution for the long-term. Life-cycle cost analysis can help facilitate these decisions.


https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/roads/

Tsavo Lion wrote:Unlike in China, all those projects take too long to complete & r soaked with corruption; they also serve to line the pockets of billionaires whom Putin gave permission to do business & who pay him back with luxuries.

..there is plenty of corruption in China..

Big_Gazza wrote:

SeigSoloyvov wrote:now now there is plenty of corruption in China ....

Errr, No.  There isn't, unless you are referring to private enterprise where all the Chinese psychopaths/sociopaths converge (as they can't pursue their desires within the public service or CPC).  Don't confuse the occasional incompetence of public servents or government officials with actual corruption.  

Real corruption within the Chinese governmental system is ruthlessly hunted down by the CPCs internal affairs investigators and miscreants are put down very hard.  The CPC realises that the main threat to their legitimacy comes from public perceptions of corruption and they have zero tolerance for it.  Bo Xilai was a good example of how even the mightiest in China can't flaught the law. Whatever his actual crimes were, he brought shame onto the CPC and was punished accordingly.  If a hi-flyer like him can be torn down and destroyed, the small fish in the CPC and the public service are under no delusions of what would happen to them if they allowed themselves to be tempted by illicit money.

The Chinese look to have a very good system to minimise coruption. Chinese are given a choice:

(1) Go into private enterprise and compete to enrich yourself (within the law) but forget about ever being able to convert your wealth into political power, or
(2) Go into public service and compete to gain political power, but forget about ever being super wealthy.  You'll be comfortable and will have lifelong economic certainty, but you won't be a billionaire.

Jack Ma can have more money that God, but has less political power than a post office clerk.  Xi Jinping has enormous executive power but won't ever own his own private jet or hotel complex.

The problem with the West is that we don't have boundaries between elite private wealth and political influence, so every greedy sociopath (or worse) with a billionaire fortune can twist society into dancing to their nefarous tune.  Our corrupt practises are legalised, and the puppet masters pull the strings to pursue their hidden agendas while their media assets look the other way (or erect smoke screens to conceal their owners activities) and the bought-and-paid-for politicians compete for the next tranche of election-time cash and try to outdo each other with fawning displays of servitude to the concealed Oligarchs and Deep State elites.

Paul Craig Roberts:

As I have made the same points, I can only applaud Martyanov and The Saker. Where we might differ is in recognizing that endlessly accepting insults and provocations encourages their increase until the only alternative is surrender or war. So, the questions for Andrei Martyanov, The Saker, and for Putin and the Russian government is: How long does turning your other cheek work? Do you turn your other cheek so long as to allow your opponent to neutralize your advantage in a confrontation? Do you turn your other cheek so long that you lose the support of the patriotic population for your failure to defend the country’s honor? Do you turn your other cheek so long that you are eventually forced into war or submission? Do you turn your other cheek so long that the result is nuclear war?


Saker :

Here is where I and Paul Craig Roberts differ dramatically on the issue of Russia’s strategy. Yes, I agree with Dr. Roberts that, quoting William Fulbright, “words are deeds and style is substance insofar as they influence men’s mind and behavior”. But while insults and provocations are unpleasant and in some cases do influence mind and behavior of some, with modern day Russia it is different.

And here is the point–the United States cannot use this power against Russia without being annihilated itself,  

-What about US sanctions , is not this a power they have that they can use at will to break Russia?

Do you turn your other cheek so long that you lose the support of the patriotic population for your failure to defend the country’s honor?

So basically SAKER , replied to an article of Paul Craig Roberts ,that is pro good relations with Russia