- script and seal
You know who I like? Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary for Obama. You know why I like him? Because he has a really good blog.
Yesterday on his bloggie blog, LaHood spelled out a new study of Baltimore transportation projects that shows bike and pedestrian projects create more jobs than traditional road projects per dollar spent. Here’s the money line from the report: “We find that pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure projects create 11-14 jobs per $1 million of spending while road infrastructure projects create approximately 7 jobs per $1 million of expenditures.”
Why would bike projects create more jobs than highway-building? The Baltimore study says the answer lies in the ratios of labor costs to material costs and engineering costs to construction costs.
1. Bike and pedestrian projects are labor intensive, but the materials are cheaper than those required to build roads. So more money goes to workers rather than to buying materials.
2. Projects like striping bike lanes and pouring sidewalks have a higher engineering cost and lower construction costs, so they’re cheaper to physically build but more money goes to sustain engineering jobs.
Cue the misguided “my gas tax and car registration dollars shouldn’t go towards these dumbass bike projects” arguments anyway…
Ok!
Infrastructure projects put more people to work because they cost much more. More money = more jobs.
Bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes!
Bikes!
More bike lanes equals less car lanes.
Less car lanes equals higher congestion.
Higher congestion equals less efficiency.
Less efficiency equals higher cost to produce goods.
Higher cost to produce goods equals a price of consumer goods inflation.
A price of consumer goods inflation equals lower savings.
Lower savings equals a reduction in wealth.
Looks like bikes are the most efficient way to take us to the poor house.
Thanks for the irrelevant, patently false and unwarranted info, Andy!
Boy, do I wish I were there with you in an American economy that still manufactures goods! Where’d you find that, anyhow?
Hardly a long term fix for the unemployment problem. Either way, once the project is completed, the jobs go bye bye. My sense is that maintenance is done by existing staff, rather than new hires.
NEXT!
And yet our bankrupt Federal government still has to cover most of the expense of a bridge over noisy I-5 to Portland’s richest neighborhood.