Transportation
HEGE Series
Texas Leads Nation With Fastest Economic Expansion 31 Mar 2023
The Road Home 12 Jul 2021
— “State law requires roughly 97 percent of TxDOT’s roughly $15 billion annual budget to be spent on roadways. For decades, Texas Republicans have contended that highways are the engine that powers the state’s economy. “Everything we’re doing for transportation infrastructure feeds into keeping Texas number one in the nation for economic development,” Abbott said in January.
It’s the same argument advanced by the Associated General Contractors of Texas (AGC), which represents 85 percent of the state’s highway contractors. Between January 2013 and December 2020, AGC contributed more than $2.5 million to Texas officeholders, most of that to powerful Republicans, and another $2.2 million to Texas Infrastructure Now, a pro-road-building political action committee, according to Texans for Public Justice. In that time span, the group donated $375,200 to Texans for Greg Abbott, $334,950 to Texans for Dan Patrick, and $303,100 to Senator Robert Nichols, the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee. Terry Canales, the Democratic chair of the House Transportation Committee, received just $4,000.”
The article also reveals, that automobile insurance rates remain low despite Texas having high national rankings for bad drivers. The cause of 80% of state traffic accidents is related to alcohol, yet there has been no legislative redress of that, no stiffer penalties enacted for driving under the influence.
Census: Texas 'tops the charts' with fastest-growing cities in U.S. May 25, 2023
Texas Ranked No. 1 for Worst Drivers in Nation
States With The Worst Drivers, Ranked
The US States With The Worst Drivers, Ranked
Study ranks Texas as state with nation's worst drivers
The World’s Widest Highway Spans a Whopping 26 Lanes
Urban Highways with the Most Lanes
Detroit
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (song) — Lyrics
Our traffic is so congested
Mass confusion on wheels
But Detroit is adroit, what they'll do in Detroit
Is make bigger automobiles
See — It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
How the Unions Killed Detroit
— right-wing political propaganda
Peter S. Boyer writes in the New Yorker that it was long-held arrangements with unions and workers, beginning in 1937 when the U.A.W. became the sole bargaining agent for the nation’s autoworkers
Pensions and benefits caused “the labor costs of a G.M. vehicle [to be] roughly fifteen hundred dollars more than what it cost to produce a car in the [foreign] transplant factories.”
The Road Ahead
Labor Killed Detroit? Not So Fast
— “Unions and the right to unionize are critical to a properly functioning modern free market economy. Have there been excesses? Yes. But are they to blame for Detroit's problems right now? Obviously not.”
An image of unions has been painted over the last few decades by right wing representatives of Corporate American (aka Republican Party politicians) as too-powerful, ossified, corrupt and corrupting, sprawling organizations that strangle American ingenuity.
Once again, the pot calling the kettle black, the finger pointing at others instead of self.
What killed Detroit? Let’s not forget the ‘who.
— Not high union wages, but "High pensions for unionized workers get its share of the blame..."
What killed Detroit? 3 theories
1. The rise of the suburbs
2. Lack of economic diversity
3. Bad governance
[Not high union wages for auto workers]
How Detroit went broke: The answers may surprise you — and don't blame Coleman Young
The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit