John Cox

Blogs · @wyome

Tagged infrastructure · everything

www.fastcompany.com

It’s time to start removing highways. For real this time

Highway removal offers significant benefits for urban communities—reconnecting neighborhoods fragmented by decades of freeway construction, reducing carbon emissions, and reclaiming valuable urban land—yet remains rare in the U.S. due to outdated federal transportation policy, institutional resistance from state departments of transportation, and flawed evaluation methods that systematically favor highway expansion over removal. State DOTs like Minnesota's employ misleading traffic models, vague equity metrics, and inadequate public engagement to justify maintaining highways rather than exploring removal alternatives, perpetuating a system that perpetually harms the communities most affected by these infrastructure decisions.

Permalink urbaninfrastructure

newrepublic.com

The GOP Is Dying. Time for a Whig Revival?

Timothy Noah argues that the GOP is effectively dead—hollowed out into an authoritarian Trump cult, as Liz Cheney and historian Sean Wilentz both contend—and that any post-Trump conservative party won't revive Buckley/Reagan orthodoxy but might instead resemble the 19th-century Whig Party. He lays out why the Whigs (anti-Jacksonian, pro-infrastructure, wary of executive overreach and manifest destiny, skeptical of populist mythologizing) offer a surprisingly apt template for a reformed, government-friendly conservatism that Democrats could actually negotiate with. Worth keeping for its historical analogy explaining what a "sane" successor to today's Republican Party might look like.

Permalink politicsinfrastructuredonald trump

NOEMA

The Disappearing Art Of Maintenance

New York's R32 subway trains—the unpainted "Brightliners" that operated for 58 years despite being designed to last only 35—exemplify how meticulous maintenance can extend the life of infrastructure far beyond its predicted lifespan, a feat the MTA achieved through scheduled preventive maintenance practices implemented since 1990. The piece argues that maintenance is fundamentally undervalued in capitalist economies that prioritize cheap disposal over labor-intensive upkeep, and proposes that treating maintenance as a serious economic and political framework—rather than an afterthought—could better address both climate change and resource scarcity than the dominant "reduce, reuse, recycle" paradigm. Rather than waiting for climate catastrophe to force behavioral change, Vuocolo contends we need to rebuild economic systems that value the practical knowledge and skilled labor that keeps society functioning, even if that means fundamentally challenging how capitalism organizes work and social value.

Permalink sustainabilitymaintenanceinfrastructureclimate

Marginal REVOLUTION

Electric Roads — Marginal Revolution

Researchers are developing buried charging pads in roads that would wirelessly transfer electricity to vehicles as they drive, potentially reducing EV battery sizes by 80 percent and eliminating the need for frequent charging stops. This approach shifts the energy storage burden from the vehicle to the grid infrastructure, allowing EVs to operate with much smaller, cheaper batteries while maintaining long-distance driving capability. The technology, pioneered in New Zealand, could fundamentally change EV design and economics by making vehicles lighter and more affordable.

Permalink technologysustainabilityinfrastructuretransportation