Maintaining
From an interesting article on the cost of maintaining highways:
On average, they write, "one dollar of annual highway spending reduces the annual congestion costs to road users only 8 cents." This is not a return on a one-time investment but a continuing expense; we have to keep spending that dollar to get the 8 cents.
So here's the $64,000,000,000 question: What is the cost of doing nothing? We don't keep interstate highways in hermetically sealed jars - if they're not fixed up regularly, their utility goes down as potholes cause accidents and wear on cars' suspensions. So if we're getting 8 cents on the dollar in improvement and we prevent a dollar's worth of delays and other costs, then we would come out on top.
That's an important point, as witnessed by New York's experience with subways in the 1970s. City officials thought that taking money out of subway maintainance could shore up the larger fiscal picture and keep the City out of default. It didn't stop the 1975 fiscal crisis and the so-called "deferred maintainance" cost far more in the long term than keeping the system in top shape to begin with, especially in terms of lost riders and residents.
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rj3 | 2:13 PM |
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