At some point, we in the US are going to need to print some money to stimulate the economy.
Has anyone seen any of those ‘shovel ready’ projects mentioned back in the 2008 stimulus package? Me either.
So, with the goal of being constructive (it’s not all doom and gloom over here at BSC HQ) we’re starting a new series, called Big Ideas for the NewNew Deal.
In short, if you had to print and spend $3tr, where should it go?
Some of these ideas may sound a little zany, some of them are definitely half-baked. But the goal is to open the aperture, and hopefully help spur a more productive conversation about where all that money should go, when we open the fire-hose.
With that in mind, here’s Part 1: Transportation.
First step, let’s make all that cheap land in the East Bay accessible, through a functional transit system. When I first moved to SF I was shocked at how disconnected SF was from Oakland, owing to the fact you have basically one bridge connecting the two major metropolitan areas.
This is stupid, let’s fix it.
Come to think of it, why not invest in a real transit system for the entire Bay. One that connects Oakland as tightly to SF as Brooklyn and Queens are to Manhattan. Here’s a vision someone else cooked up.
Now let’s think a little bigger. America has always been a land of two coasts, even since the introduction of the Erie Canal connected the ocean coast of the east with the interior coasts of the great lakes.
Fifty years later came the intercontinental railroad, bringing the west to the east and the vision of a truly bi-coastal nation to life.
Fifty years after that, came the Panama Canal, another step forward in reducing the time and treasure required to move matter back and forth.
So why not bring that vision to the 21st century.
NYC to SF, via Detroit, Chicago and Colorado in ~10hrs, and no airport shenanigans. Bit better than the almost 100hrs it takes currently…
Something tells me if you could get to downtown Chicago in 30 minutes by train, Detroit wouldn’t be in such a ghost town…