Last week Business Week was asking people, myself included, what advice they had for the new President vis a vis infrastructure and the stimulus package.

I said this:

“The Interstate Highway System was a marvel, but we don’t need another. By all means, fix the existing traffic infrastructure — roads, bridges, bottlenecks. But heedlessly laying more asphalt is a retrograde approach that rewards a counterproductive quest towards mobility for mobility’s sake. Instead of building new roads — which encourage unsustainable development patterns, more vehicular traffic, and are often only fully occupied at a few peak periods — we need to emphasize transit, but also smarter roads: Sensors that detect “non-recurring” traffic disruptions (the cause of an estimated one-third of traffic delays), intelligent traffic signals and variable speed limits and that react to changing conditions, systems that allow “hard shoulders” to be converted into extra traffic lanes, and real-time, occupancy-based tolling and parking programs.”

I was reminded of this when I read, in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, an op-ed by IBM’s Samuel J. Palmisano.

He wrote: “Smarter infrastructure is by far our best path to creating new jobs and stimulating growth. We at IBM were asked to map this out by President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, and our research shows that a $30 billion stimulus investment in just three areas — smart grids, health-care IT and broadband — could yield almost one million new jobs within one year. That’s possible because these kinds of infrastructure have significantly greater economic and societal multiplier effects than traditional infrastructure like bridges and highways.”

I was particularly interested in the next graph, and, as a thought experiment, try replacing the word ‘power’ with ‘travel’ (as in car travel):

“Our power grids are the largest remaining artifact of the Industrial Age, and they’re due for a smart upgrade. Using broadband data streams, digital sensors and advanced analytics, demand can be understood in real time. Utilities can source and manage power more intelligently, helping to bring renewable sources onto the grid. And consumers could understand the variable cost of power and alter their behavior accordingly. A smarter utility network could also handle the growing demand for hybrid and electric cars. Today’s utility grid would struggle to manage this burden.”

The idea of electric cars becoming part of a utility’s grid is an interesting one — in essence, then, congestion pricing would be the same thing as charging more when electrical usage surges. Of course, up to this point, most driving has been “too cheap to meter.” (or is that ramp-meter?)

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Cars, Cities, Congestion, Etc., Parking, Roads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.