Highway Update, and Micropolises

First, an Obama-driven update on the highway projects in the stimulus bill, based on an article in the Los Angeles Times. Obama noted recently that highway projects are "ahead of schedule and under budget". The article goes on to point out some of the chief reason
Of course, in California, some of these highway investments are going to rural areas such as a bridge in Mendocino County, rather all going to choked urban areas in desperate need (In full disclosure, millions are also going to the 710). And the investment in small-town, McCain America brings me to the second part of this week's blogpost...micropolises.

A micropolis is, according to C. Kenneth Orski, a area neither suburban nor the rural, often centering around a city of around 10,000, and it's the only portion of my key stakeholder segment of my policy presentation not yet covered in this blog. Believe it, I actually learned about this on AIMZones...proving that they are actually useful for something more than celebrity dish. Since metropolitan areas are usually defined by counties, defined micropolises appear in places with small counties, namely the South and Midwest, though in reality micropolises dot the entire country (for example, Parlier, CA, might qualify as a micropolis, but as it's in Fresno County, it's automatically-and unfairly-grouped into the Fresno Metro Area just as Needles is into the San Bernardino). As I stated in the presentation, both micropolises and metropolises will benefit from the stimulus package. Micropolises will benefit from the money that is being sunk into rural roads and rural broadband, and perhaps some micropolises will one day become metropolises, as Visalia did.




By the way, I reopened most of my Purple Backpack Polls--they're open until the end of the month. From the Occidental intramural basketball tournament, I'm the Ferdey coach for the Purple Backpack Politics Blog.

A Dose of Promethean Policy, Part 2, or, California-Nevada Interstate Maglev

It's been a relatively slow week for infrastructure news...it pretty much peetered out after Obama's budget. So I'm going to dust off something that's been in the news for the past few weeks--the California-Nevada Interstate Maglev. Last week, in his reply to the State of the Union, Gov. Parcell, er, Jindal, attacked the proposed project as wasteful pork. The project apparently is the chief whipping boy (along with the NEA) of the GOP: A Los Angeles Times article from a while back notes Boehner's assault on high-speed rail. Republicans have chastisted Senator Harry Reid of Searchlight, Nevada (an hour's drive from Vegas or the California line) for slipping the funding in as pork. Republicans forgot that the $8 billion has not been appropriated for any specific project as of yet. The maglev project would need $12-14 billion to be fully built, less than half of the projected price tag of the California High-Speed Rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Here's some more facts and analysis about the high-speed rail project. The maglev would use German techology to travel over dedicated tracks (no freight interference) at up to 300 miles an hour. The train would stop in Las Vegas, at the Ivanpah Valley Airport in Primm, NV; in Barstow, Ontario, and Anaheim in CA, in addition to possible stops at in Victorville, CA, and at LA's Union Station. Now, you've probably heard of most of those, except for Primm--right now an unicorporated community of about 500. Why would they , apart from connections to an airport that won't be built for nearly a decade. I'll tell you why--TO SPUR GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT.

Now, I'm not always in favor of development, especially when historic preservation is an issue, but sensible devolpment (meaning built-to-last and environmentally-friendly) is what we need to get us out of this recession. This project would create much-needed jobs in two of the worse-off of these United States--It was recently reported that California's unemployment is at 10.1%, and Nevada continues to have one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation. And infrastructure investmest spurs that kind of the devolpment--look at what's been done on Del Mar Blvd and the Paseo Colorado in Pasadena thanks to the Gold Line, and look at what's happening in the Arts District lofts by the Gold Line extension. The same thing could happen in Primm, in Anaheim, or even in Barstow.

Oh, and one more thing:

RIP LA Times California section