WE NEED SMARTER INFRASTRUCTURE

As Congress stalls in dealing with funds for crumbling highway and transit infrastructure, a sense of despair comes over the USA. A consensus that transcends Red/White, economic and racial divisions -- that our Federal system has become dysfunctional -- is upon us. Bernie Sanders’s plea for fundamental societal reform resonates in the heart of America. Is he the FDR of the 21^st century?

To move or not to move?

Our transportation planning process suffers. Highway interests fixed in 20^th century thinking control the many stages of project development that put new concrete and asphalt in our cities and towns. There have been modest gains in attention to walking and biking, sharing streets and accommodating app-based sharing. But on the whole, American life centers on parking lots -- despite the congestion, the pollution and the deadly accidents.

New York Large and Small

There are two New Yorks. One is the world city of 8.5 million residents surrounded by suburbs that make for a region of over $15 million. It is huge and bold and brash.

The other is New York State, and it is a vast network of hamlets, towns and cities nestled among majestically green hills and lakes. Here the scale is small. Bridges are designed in ways that obscure rather than enhance pedestrian life.

Upstate but huge in scale, the project underway for a Hudson River-straddling $5.2-billion Tappan Zee Bridge has no distrinct transit elements. Cost studies estimate adding bus lanes would cost $2.9 billion. Adding rail would require $6.7 billion! They were oblivious to ATN options that would add little to structural requirements.

TransitX sees podcars appended to the new Tappan Zee Bridge.

Jpods on the TZB?

An iconic opportunity has been missed under the watch of Cuomo, the Clintons and the host of New York politicians. With designer flare, light guideways could still be woven into superstructure aesthetics.

This is the same valley in which the more progressive NYS Public Consumer Commissioner hopes to make the Hudson the “Silicon Valley of Energy”.

Jpods has a base of operation in Poughkeepsie an hour to the north. Is it too late to fund a river-straddling PRT with networks on both sides of the mighty Hudson?