Another Friedman article praising China

[Winehole23]

There's a real concern extant public facilities will be sold off to private interests, for good and for ill. Maybe private companies will be better at the upkeep.

BTW, anybody, how's that working out in Dallas and Houston? The toll roads, I mean. It's not a hobby horse for me. I know practically nil about it. Little help?

As a semi-frequent traveler through Houston, I've appreciated their convenience and lack of congestion, even at peak driving times. And I do like 130 here in Austin as an alternative to driving through Pflugerville, Round Rock and Georgetown going north.

[word]

But this time, I agree with him. It's the economy, stupid.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/op...ml?ref=opinion

We did it to ourselves and we're gonna pay, big time, for our 'victim culture'.

[Winehole23]

@Drachen: doobs referred to his great ideas in passing but never said what they were. I'm not sure anyone suggested infrastructure spending was a panacea (btw, who did?) but the infrastructure is showing its age and apparently needs to be fixed.

You don't do it to be stimulative, you do it because it needs doing, like doobs suggested upstream.

There can also be long term benefits that are harder to quantify, no?

[coyotes_geek]

There's a real concern extant public facilities will be sold off to private interests, for good and for ill. Maybe private companies will be better at the upkeep.

BTW, anybody, how's that working out in Dallas and Houston? The toll roads, I mean. It's not a hobby horse for me. I know practically nil about it. Little help?

As a semi-frequent traveler through Houston, I've appreciated their convenience and lack of congestion, even at peak driving times. And I do like 130 here in Austin as an alternative to driving through Pflugerville, Round Rock and Georgetown going north.

I know over in europe the concession style agreements for private companies owning and operating public facilities is widespread. That's why when Texas, specifically TxDOT, tried to do something similar here with toll roads damn near all the teams bidding for those projects were anchored by european companies. American engineering and construction companies weren't set up to do business like that and the european concessionare firms were.

As for how the toll roads are working out, I remember reading somewhere that there is only one toll road in all of Texas that has not met or exceeded it's traffic projections. There are plenty of people who gripe about 'em, but there's more than enough people driving them to keep them financially viable. Toll roads are certainly a tough pill to swallow for a state that was able to avoid having to use them for so long, but until the state legislature finds a way to increase TxDOT's revenue stream you can bet that there are going to be more toll roads to come.