5 Essays I'm Excited to Write This year
I promise. I swear I'm going to make good on my exasperation.
Okay, so 2025 is the year Exasperated Infrastructures takes off. I’m going to do my best to be more consistent (working with some friends to help me with a content calendar/posting schedule) and channel the exasperation into some more useful and urgent ideas and actions. I’m currently sitting in a cafe in Washington DC awaiting the start of the annual Transportation Research Board conference. It’s coinciding with a new Congress, Decongestion Pricing, and a snowstorm that’s going to shut DC down or not.
Is it worth it to prepare/invest in storm management infrastructure for a single day of heavy flakes or should cities divert already limited resources to preparedness? How can city governments prepare for many limited events simultaneously?1
Speaking of preparation, here are five topics I hope to cover this year in long-form:
1. Reauthorization
I’m in the midst of writing a long-ish series on the big Federal bill that allows Congress to spend money on transportation. We’ve been spending Federal dollars on state projects since ca. 1916, and there have been many iterations of this and decades of Federal dollars authorized to spend on Federal projects, namely the Interstate Highway System. But is there a way to spend this money more effectively? How can we get more bang for our buck2 projects the are tied to our constituents’ lives (everyone) and how do we know this is true?
Taking a step back: we need to know where we’ve been so we can diagnose problems more effectively. Then we need to understand the media circus and the dozens(!) of incredibly arcane takes from our thought leaders on the subject. Finally, we’ll get into what you all want: changes we need, assuming that we can escape the policy death loop.3
2. Disrupting Air Travel
I recently watched a video from Sam Denby over at Wendover Productions that, as usual, clearly created a narrative around the economics of air travel. I recommend watching the whole video but I want to dig further into the economics here (to flex my undergrad muscles) and try and come up with an exasperated post that makes a case for better air travel, incentivizing airlines to align more with better travel practices, etc. It’ll be fun to dig into 10Ks again and try to understand what makes these businesses tick and what’s holding them back from pure profit. Hint: it’ll be an essay about costs and revenues. Carrots and sticks.
3. Municipal Bonds, State Infrastructure Banks & More
I read David Schleicher’s “In A Bad State” in 2024, and, while I think I’m too dumb to understand the law behind why and how municipal bonds work, I want to try to be less dumb by digging into the world of debt and state behavior to help figure out more verticals for creating resilience around how and how much we spend on infrastructure projects in the US. Stay tuned; I’ll try to grab an interview with David and help develop some ideas for how a modern debt/equity system can work to help move these glacial projects along.
4. “The Pick”
I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a longer exposé on MTA’s “pick” process, which is the procedural manner by which Subway engineers and bus operators choose their schedules for the following six months. There’s a fascinating story here: humanizing the people who do that great work for us to keep NYC moving but there’s a secondary moving piece here: the Pick still happens in person and dragging it online has become a terribly frustrating ordeal. For EI, I’ll do some thinking out loud, but this needs to be placed in a more broadly read publication to kickstart the efficiencies required to drag the pick into the 21st century, 25 years in.
5. Three Faces of Public Policy x Transportation Policy
I recently met with my friend Xavier Harmony for what will likely be the last time for a long time—he’s headed back to Australia later this year with his family after over a decade of carving out an incisive space in Pennsylvania and Virginia. He told me about Douglas Torgerson’s “Between knowledge and politics: Three faces of policy analysis.” I’m interested in highlighting Xav’s work and bringing my own perspective to this interesting topic through some recent examples of policy, all of which seem to be counterintuitive and none of which is objective or truly “factual.”
That’s how I’m thinking about this newsletter from an essay perspective. Make sure you comment below if you’ve got ideas or want to push me in a specific direction. Happy to connect!
Also: there’s practical challenges here, too. Where do we store this equipment? How do we maintain it? Who gets access to it first, last, at all, ever?
I decided I hate this phrase while writing it but I’m keeping it in for you, dear reader, so you can learn how I think.
You’ve got to follow along to learn what I mean by this!
Looking forward to another year of exasperation (positive)!
Very timely, Sam! "Is it worth it to prepare/invest in storm management infrastructure for a single day of heavy flakes or should cities divert already limited resources to preparedness?"
I don't know, but Richmond, VA has hundred-year-old water system, and the snow seems to have caused the residents here (and in the surrounding, connected counties) to pay the price for a very low investment in updating over time. Maybe the city should sell some bonds? (but honestly, the muni stuff is over my head too)