5 Questions
Telegraph just can’t get things done as quickly. Also, our elected officials get political capital by cutting the ribbon on new projects, not by filling potholes. So there’s this natural tendency in democratic societies to defer maintenance. Most of our infrastructure projects were built 50, 60 years ago and were designed for a 50-year service life. They’re dying on schedule. We just haven’t sufficiently upgraded and maintained them.
d
How does infrastructure intersect with climate change?
s
P.
Partly, it’s about mitigation; we’re trying to reduce carbon emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C, compared to preindustrial levels. It’s a momentous target and you can’t achieve it unless you decarbonize transportation. You’ve got to move to electric vehicles. But it’s also about resilience. It’s about how we build roads and bridges so that they’re not going to topple in extreme weather. Obviously, this carries high costs and won’t benefit us so much as it will our children’s children. That’s historically how we thought about infrastructure. For example, it was probably very hard in New York City in the early 1900s to justify building the subways. But it was understood that the true beneficiaries would be the next generation. We have to think likewise when it comes to infrastructure and climate, which is really an intergenerational issue.
Professor Emeritus and Transportation Policy Expert, Robert Cervero
Historically, we talk about public infrastructure. The nature of public infrastructure is that my private consumption of it benefits the public at large. If I were to consume poor-quality water and get sick, that’s a public cost. If I use public transportation and help reduce traffic, the public benefits. But there’s some gray area, no question. Society is better off having healthy seniors, but the benefit is predominantly to the seniors themselves. We’re all better off with lower carbon emissions from electric cars, but much of the benefit is to the car owner. There’s enough stretching of the definition that it’s no great surprise this has become controversial. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently gave U.S. infrastructure a C- grade. Things like dams and schools got Ds. How did it get so bad?
COURTESY OF ROBERT CERVERO
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The word infrastructure has been in the news a lot since President Biden announced his $2 trillion plan to improve and repair roads, bridges, and tunnels, etc. He also proposes to provide electric vehicle incentives, increase investments in manufacturing, and improve elder care. Do these things fit your definition of infrastructure?
In California, we’ve been trying to build a high-speed rail system for the last 35 years. Meanwhile, other economies—particularly China—are building smart infrastructure at a dizzyingly rapid pace and are now poised to leapfrog well ahead of us. There are reasons China can do this. They’re a communist system. They have a national economic development plan. There’s no public debate. A lot of our infrastructure projects get embroiled in controversy and stopped. It’s not just a matter of public input but also environmental review and labor protection laws and private regulations. We
Are you optimistic that there is enough time and political will to build sustainable infrastructure in this country?
I think we have to be optimistic. And I think the president’s plan is an important step in the right direction. I also think this plan is so large that the incumbents are going to resist it. I’m heartened by the fact that Biden was a longtime senator and learned the art of compromise. I think he went out with a very aggressive plan, realizing the more aggressive he was, the more likely it was that he would get some reasonably bold step forward. To change topics, tell us about your running hobby—or obsession.
In the early 2000s, I was contacted by the Robert Wood Johnson foundation to join an expert advisory panel, which I chaired. The Active Living Research program sponsored interdisciplinary research to help reverse America’s growing obesity epidemic. At seminars, researchers showed that sedentary living was a major contributor to obesity. That was my lifestyle at the time—sitting in an office chair for eight hours a day. I was overweight and stuck in a sloth-like existence. The Active Living movement lit a fire under me. I began running—a half mile, then a mile, then several miles … and quickly got into a virtuous cycle wherein I’d lose some weight, run a bit faster, and then lose even more weight. Within a half year I ran my first marathon. To date, I’ve completed 66 marathons and 112 ultras, mostly on mountainous trails, ranging from 50Ks to 100-milers. While I haven’t run a race in over two years, I still run a lot, albeit slowly, this year averaging over 200 miles a month. —N.A. CALIFORNIA SUMMER 2021 17
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