Bridges here in the DC area are falling apart. Miles of roadway are crumbling. The very transportation grid we rely upon is aged and nobody wants to shell out the billions it would take to renew it.
Why not invite private corporations to take on the problem? A company that rebuilds a major bridge, tunnel, freeway, etc would then get to name it, paint it, even adorn it with their own corporate colors and logo. There'd be a tax break for the company, news and traffic agencies would plug the structure and that company's efforts during news reports, the public is not summarily taxed to death for the work and everybody's happy.
"This is your Pandora traffic minute. Traffic is delightfully light due to the Boeing Tri-Level freeway ramping onto the Apple OS-Xway. The Google Quadway and Tesla PeopleMover are both up to speed. The Walmart Flyover shows zero snags. And for those folks out on our Beltway, remember to have a great today, a great tomorrow and a very GoodYear."-- whatrock, Dec 29 2015 Chinese infrastructure conquering the world http://www.telegrap...d-rail-network.html [xenzag, Dec 29 2015] You need the Chinese instead of those puny corporations. In just seven years the Chinese have built over 11,000 miles of TGV rail connections featuring 200+mph trains that connect every major city to every other one. By contrast, the USA doesn't have one high speed train, despite being the perfect environment for these. (neither does the UK but we are a small country that doesn't have the distances that warrant them). Even India is set to get a TGV, courtesy of the clever Chinese who can build anything. I'm sure they would be only too happy to fix up the crumbling infrastructure in the USA.-- xenzag, Dec 29 2015 [xenzag] China has a population density over 4 times that of the US, and the US has much wider spaces between high- population areas.-- Voice, Dec 29 2015 Greater distances mean an even greater emperative. The simple fact is that China has left the USA behind when it comes to getting things built. I visit the USA frequently and the place is falling apart.The UK isn't much better by the way, compared to places like Germany, or Denmark for innovation in every aspect of the movement of people on public and private transport.
With Trump as president the decay in the USA will get much worse as he diverts the entire concrete production of the whole country to keep those dastardly Mexican rapists out.-- xenzag, Dec 29 2015 1. Please lets leave Trump out of this. 2. Private companies already build our infrastructure. The tendering process for these gigs is complicated, the legals are a nightmare, the costs insane. 3. The idea here appears (and I might be reading it wrong) to start from the assumption that the cost of construction is removed from the public purse. The problem is that the costs are as indicated in my point 2, above. Unless the private corporations are allowed to extract revenue from the enterprise, there is little incentive. I am not sure that advertising / PR is going to provide sufficient off-set. 4. Perhaps the idea is instead to encourage Carnegie-like activity, but for transportation infrastructure rather than intellectual infrastructure? 5. If I am wrong in my assumption at point 3, above, and the cost is not to be removed from the public purse entirely, but instead the PR/advertising advantage is only a partial offset of the cost, which continued to be borne by the taxpayer, then the idea is not great because (a) PR is very hard to value, (b) no-one wants their brand to be associated with the gridlock that will follow 7-10 years down the line and (c) this sort of "we pay for it, so we get to name it" already exists in relation to privately owned infrastructure, e.g. the Emirates stadium (though to be fair Emirates didn't actually build the thing, but their financial involvement made it possible).-- calum, Dec 29 2015 But Trump is our hero. How can we leave him out of it?-- pocmloc, Dec 29 2015 They'd never finish it; they'd drown in irony before they were done.-- 8th of 7, Dec 29 2015 The Pope, Donald Trump...no difference, same thing really.-- blissmiss, Dec 29 2015 Indiana sold off their interest in the I 80-90 Toll Road to some foreign company. Tolls went up. Snow clearing got worse. Toll booth operators were replaced with automated ticket things. Gas along the toll road jumped from a few cents above the median to nearly 40 cents above median. Traffic from semis that used to take it started to go down the other highways, rolling through small towns and creating a hazard for locals.-- RayfordSteele, Dec 30 2015 //the public is not summarily taxed to death for the work and everybody's happy
No. Pay tax. Pay more tax. Tax builds public and civil spaces. Americans have low tax rates and shit infrastructure. See a connection?
If you don't trust how your tax is spent, vote.
The erosion of public space because someone wants to make an extra dollar, fuck that.-- the porpoise, Dec 30 2015 random, halfbakery