The Smithian

April 22nd, 2013

Zoom

…the governor’s decision to shut down an entire city will undeniably influence how the next mayor or governor will respond to a major threat. To lock down or not to lock down is now the yardstick against which the public will measure their leaders in a crisis.

more.

…the governor’s decision to shut down an entire city will undeniably influence how the next mayor or governor will respond to a major threat. To lock down or not to lock down is now the yardstick against which the public will measure their leaders in a crisis.

more.

April 2nd, 2013

thesmithian

‘…who does [Speaker John] Boehner think is going to pay the greatly increased bills when bridges start collapsing, taking lives with them?’

…what does he think is going to happen to an economy where goods can’t easily be transported from one city or state to another because the nation’s rail and roads and bridges aren’t up to the task? There’s a reason the Chamber of Commerce and unions agree on the importance of infrastructure investment: It’s incredibly important not just for job creation but for private profits…Republicans used to support far, far more extensive infrastructure spending. But now? They’re more interested in hurting Obama than helping the nation.

more.

March 25th, 2013

thesmithian

‘With his signature this week, President Obama will lock into place deep spending cuts that threaten to undermine his second-term economic vision just four months after he won reelection. Obama has repeatedly championed a set of government investments that he argues would expand the economy and strengthen the middle class, including bolstering early-childhood education, spending more on research and development, and upgrading the nation’s roads and railways. He has said his comfortable reelection victory in November shows the country is with him.’

But none of those policies have come close to being enacted. Instead…Obama is set to sign a government funding measure that leaves in place the across-the-board cuts known as sequestration—a policy that undermines many of the goals he laid out during the 2012 campaign. Obama thinks the cuts are, in his words, “dumb”…Yet Obama now finds himself enacting a broad domestic policy that…he believes will harm the country.

more.

March 6th, 2013

thesmithian

…the mayor mentioned his personal desire to see bridges as something other than “heavy pieces of metal that we look at every single day.” With this new cloak of light, the Bay Bridge will no longer just be a conduit for some 250,000 cars per day. It will be a “worldwide piece of art,” he said. “It’s truly a beacon and we’re very blessed.”

a must-see.

March 4th, 2013

thesmithian

It’s the fear of white people and black people…What are you going to do? It’s human nature.

Terry Parker

a store owner from Roswell, Georgia who acknowledged that race shapes his views in the transit debate.

as it seems

A proposal to change the power structure of metro Atlanta’s mass transit system raises the complicated politics of race in Georgia. The tension is evident when comparing the demographics of mass transit riders against those seeking change. Roughly three-quarters of transit riders are black, according to government surveys. The lawmakers seeking a larger political role in transit decisions for northern Atlanta and its predominantly white suburbs are white.

more.

March 1st, 2013

thesmithian

Zoom

Perhaps sparked by highway congestion or the hassle of air travel, Amtrak’s passenger rail service has been the nation’s fastest growing mode of transportation, according to a new report that urges Congress to push forward with coordinated national rail plan. The government-subsidized railway carried a record 31.2 million people last year, a 55 percent increase since 1997…

love it.

Perhaps sparked by highway congestion or the hassle of air travel, Amtrak’s passenger rail service has been the nation’s fastest growing mode of transportation, according to a new report that urges Congress to push forward with coordinated national rail plan. The government-subsidized railway carried a record 31.2 million people last year, a 55 percent increase since 1997…

love it.

February 28th, 2013

thesmithian

Zoom

L.A.’s most iconic river bridge, the Sixth Street Viaduct, is suffering from a degenerative “concrete cancer” that [puts] it at risk of collapse during an earthquake. It will be demolished to make way for a new span to be completed by 2019. The…proposal chosen by the city…reveals how the city’s self-image is itself transforming…The renderings include direct access to the river, park space, and pathways for cyclists and pedestrians. “We’re trying to change the hierarchy of automobiles first…”

more.

L.A.’s most iconic river bridge, the Sixth Street Viaduct, is suffering from a degenerative “concrete cancer” that [puts] it at risk of collapse during an earthquake. It will be demolished to make way for a new span to be completed by 2019. The…proposal chosen by the city…reveals how the city’s self-image is itself transforming…The renderings include direct access to the river, park space, and pathways for cyclists and pedestrians. “We’re trying to change the hierarchy of automobiles first…”

more.

February 22nd, 2013

thesmithian

Zoom

…cities live or die by their walkability.

…cities live or die by their walkability.

February 13th, 2013

thesmithian

Zoom

…direct Madrid-Barcelona-Paris high-speed train service is set to begin in April, cutting…current standard service running time to 9 hours from 15…

nice.

…direct Madrid-Barcelona-Paris high-speed train service is set to begin in April, cutting…current standard service running time to 9 hours from 15…

nice.

February 13th, 2013

thesmithian

'It may be that this speech will be remembered mainly in its attempt to demonstrate through ambitious proposals the limits of the American political imagination, that it will demonstrate to the world, which already is doing a lot of what the president last night merely proposed this country should do, everything that the United States, acting through its Congress assembled, declines to do for its citizens. Because the president was right in a lot of what he said last night. Science really is important. Education really is still the silver bullet. The climate really is changing. The bridges really are crumbling. Some things really do have to be done. It is in the shaming where the president’s optimism truly shines through. It implies that there is a conscience buried somewhere in the opposition...he thinks they still care.

February 4th, 2013

thesmithian

'...For a variety of reasons, the homeless often wind up living amid transportation infrastructure: rest areas, roadside rights-of-way, the underside of highway bridges, train stations or even moving train cars or buses. In a survey of state transportation employees, 70 percent of respondents said they had encountered homeless encampments. This means that public agencies better equipped to run trains or pave highways must often act as the first responders to homelessness. It’s a sad commentary on how we handle these populations—in a society that doesn't treat access to shelter as a right—that the task falls to the front-line employees of transportation agencies untrained to do anything like this.'

January 30th, 2013

thesmithian

It’s not the question of if a major cyber warfare attack will happen—it’s an issue of when and how bad it will be…Some enterprises are facing thousands of attacks a day, while others wonder if they are going to be hacked or not. This will occur across all industries and infrastructures, and we have to think and accept that as a reality…

Eugene Kaspersky, founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab

January 25th, 2013

thesmithian

…a story of the co-creation of two vital commodities of the twentieth century—chocolate and human beings—that invites readers into the hospitals, roads, ships, and plantations that were such crucial sites of negotiation over the basic components of a free human life.

more.

…a story of the co-creation of two vital commodities of the twentieth century—chocolate and human beings—that invites readers into the hospitals, roads, ships, and plantations that were such crucial sites of negotiation over the basic components of a free human life.

more.

January 25th, 2013

thesmithian

Brace yourself. In coming weeks you’ll hear there’s no serious alternative to cutting Social Security and Medicare, raising taxes on middle class, and decimating what’s left of the federal government’s discretionary spending on everything from education and job training to highways and basic research. “We” must make these sacrifices, it will be said, in order to deal with our mushrooming budget deficit and cumulative debt. But most of the people who are making this argument are very wealthy or are sponsored by the very wealthy…

Robert Reich

December 9th, 2012

thesmithian

Zoom

The need for investment in public works…has become a casualty of Washington’s ideological wars. Republicans were once reliable partners in this kind of necessary spending. But since President Obama spent about 12 percent of the 2009 stimulus on transportation, energy and other infrastructure programs, Republicans have made it a policy to demonize these kinds of investments. When the president asked recently for a modest $50 billion for transportation improvements in the “fiscal cliff” talks, Republicans literally laughed out loud. There will be no stimulus in any deal, said Representative Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, the incoming chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee…Big government construction projects put people to work…But the biggest reason to spend money on these projects is that they are desperately needed in every city and state. Around the country, there are 70,000 structurally deficient bridges; one of them, in southern New Jersey, collapsed under a train last week, sending tank cars full of flammable gas into a creek. There are 4,000 dams in need of repair, and the electrical grid in this supposedly advanced country ranks 32nd in the world in reliability, behind Slovenia’s…

hello. plus more. and more.

The need for investment in public works…has become a casualty of Washington’s ideological wars. Republicans were once reliable partners in this kind of necessary spending. But since President Obama spent about 12 percent of the 2009 stimulus on transportation, energy and other infrastructure programs, Republicans have made it a policy to demonize these kinds of investments. When the president asked recently for a modest $50 billion for transportation improvements in the “fiscal cliff” talks, Republicans literally laughed out loud. There will be no stimulus in any deal, said Representative Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, the incoming chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee…Big government construction projects put people to work…But the biggest reason to spend money on these projects is that they are desperately needed in every city and state. Around the country, there are 70,000 structurally deficient bridges; one of them, in southern New Jersey, collapsed under a train last week, sending tank cars full of flammable gas into a creek. There are 4,000 dams in need of repair, and the electrical grid in this supposedly advanced country ranks 32nd in the world in reliability, behind Slovenia’s…

hello. plus more. and more.