And young, and i look forward to every day. Bookshops have been posing in record numbers, National Chains are closing down. 15 years ago i knit owners of about 300 bookstores. 250 of those closed just in the past 15 years. So its important for these stores to continue to survive. They add character to the local community. Its a place, a Meeting Place for people, indicates history alive by these bookshops continuing to be in existence. For more information on booktvs recent visit to provo and the many other destinations on our cities to work, go to cspan. Org cities tour. Welcome to the bookshop on ninth street and downtown durham, North Carolina. Theyre happy to have you all here today. Thank you to cspans booktv for being here. We are delighted to have Henry Petroski who is an acclaimed historian, engineer and best selling author and also the alexander professor of Civil Engineering and professor of history at duke here tonight to discuss his new book, coming. Henry petroski has written many, many books for both engineers and laypeople alike, some of which are the pencil, pushing the limits new adventures in engineering, more things considered, and many, many more. And we are just, this is the first time that he is here with us today. It is such a thrill and i introduce to you and my boss wanted me to mention to you that we have a collapse storm water drain in the employee parking lot so we are eager to hear more about infrastructure. Thank you. [laughter] look, thank you very much. Im pleased to be here. I want to talk about infrastructure in particular, the aspects of it that are discussed in my book. The title of the book the road taken suggest that the book is mainly about roads and bridges, which i see as extensions of roads, more generally its about infrastructure and the funding of infrastructure and the problems we have with infrastructure in our nation. Bridges are a problem. If i could see my slides, i will get used to this, but 600,000 euros bridges total, about one out of nine are problematic, socalled structurally deficient. That means they need work. That doesnt necessary mean they are going to collapse, although we know that sometimes that does happen. Roads, there were about 4 million miles of roads in this country. Only half of them are paved. The pothole problem is well known, and the question is how do we pay for this . How do we accomplish the repairs am repainting were necessary and so forth . How did our infrastructure get to this condition . That like to i was like to look at this historical background of things. The automobile and motorized vehicles generally have taken a lot of the blame, but even before that we had horses and wagons of course. The roads were pretty bad back then, too. And, in fact, the transition time were, from horse and wagon to motorized vehicle, there was a symbiotic relationship between them. The horses had no problem, not a complete problem in negotiating my the roads but automobiles could not. Very often the horses had to come to the rescue of the automobiles. This is just one image, we have many, many that are similar. Theres a situation that occurred in 1919 that was very important for the development of this countrys infrastructure. The u. S. Army wanted to demonstrate its mobilization capability and they undertook a convoy, taking a trip across the country from washington, d. C. To san francisco. We know that about 3000 miles, roughly. It took them 60 days largely because they the conditions of the roads were terrible. Among the army people in that convoy was a young lieutenant colonel, dwight david eisenhower. This made a very strong impression on him, and we will come back to that, talk about the interstates because of the interstates are very Much Associated with them. He was a great proponent of the interstates largely because of his experience with his transcontinental journey. There are many illustrations, photos of his transcontinental trip. The question was what they did find a bridge, was it adequate to what extent up under the army trucks . One of the participants in the transcontinental journey basically said it will not be so bad if some of them break down. We will have proof we need to build them up better. But anyway, they finally did make it to california, but, of course, as i mentioned it took 60 days. Today, depending on how fast you drive, it takes a less than that. Eisenhower was instrumental in promoting legislation in the 1950s as he was president. And one particular piece of legislation, the federal aid highway act of 1956 is credited with establishing the interstates. What it really did was establish a way for paying for the interstates. The idea of a National System of roads was going around as early as 1920. Later in the 1930s, socalled interregional roads were promoted and began to be built by those always a question of how do you pay for them. One of the problems is the federal government itself cannot build roads or on roads. The constitution simply doesnt authorize that. So the federal government, but the federal government can pay for roads and the federal government set up a system whereby they would share with the states, mainly the cost of building the roads are, in fact, in some cases they shared as much as 90 which was a great incentive. There is a positive is of course by having the federal government involved. It is a standardization from state to state, which means that when we cross the state line wouldve had to readjust to a different set of rules, a different set of geography, geometry of roads and so forth. But the roads today are highly congestive, and as we all know. When you talk about the state of our infrastructure, we want to give it grades as the American Society of Civil Engineers does. It takes into account not only the condition but also their congestion factor. If the road is in perfect condition but its highly congestive, it doesnt get a very good mark. Now, where did all this come from . Is congestion anything you . The answer of course is no, theres nothing new under the sun. When there were no cars are horses there was congestion. In fact, you could almost argue that it was more difficult tried to turn a horse around, keep a horse under control. The streets of cities had great problems. The streetcar was introduced that just created more congestion. With the Motor Vehicle being introduced, the situation didnt get any better. There were multimodes of transportation of movement, but one that is congestion that was basically stopped. So Controlling Traffic was a big part of infrastructure and we dont hear much about this often. We dont think in terms of traffic lights are roadsigns. The lines on the road. But these are really part of infrastructure, too. It takes sometimes literally decades for these things to evolve to a mature state so that theyre really doing the job they are supposed to be. Appointed a little bit about traffic control. And first fifth avenue in new york city is as good as an example as any. In fact, in some ways its the best. Because of such, so heavily trafficked. 1909, pictures of new york, going into 1910, 11 and even later, they were very, very few, if any, signs or Traffic Signals or lines of direction anywhere along the street like fifth avenue or anywhere else in the country. It wasnt that, it was understood how you knew how to manage do this if it was just it had not been developed. Nobody had written up a set of rules. And was a fellow, and his name lives on today to what is called the foundation for transportation and headquartered in washington i believe that the develop some of the first signs that he developed the first rules for traffic, call them rules for driving. He was a great proponent of the Traffic Circle and he developed rules and principles for that. He was very lucky. He was born into a welltodo family that uses them a lot because they lived near it. And it plan of time to observe the situation, to observe what was going on in the streets, fifth avenue and other intersecting street. And he came up with systems such as exhibited in his role for driving. But not everybody immediately understood of these rules or immediately i adopted them. This out of continue to be pretty much congestive at the streets in chicago, detroit and elsewhere. The traffic lights on fifth avenue looked like this. They were put in towers, in large part because there was so much congestion, not only of Motor Vehicles but also of people trying to cross the street and get what they wanted to go. That putting the traffic lights up in the air was making them more visible, and also the early traffic lights had to be manually operated. There was a policeman who literally had to throw a switch to turn the lights from red to green and vice versa. That traffic policeman would be upping the tower to get a better view of what was coming down the avenue. And when it multiple towers like this, say several blocks apart, the various leasing and managing them could communicate with each other, mostly visually. It worked to a degree but the fifth avenue merchants in particular were not very happy with the looks of these things. They didnt consider them very attractive. So they commissioned a Design Competition to replace those traffic towers with something more in keeping with the style that fifth avenue preferred. And this was the winning entry from architect named joseph friedlander. It was rather successful aesthetically and functionally. But as traffic continued to grow busy, it presented problems of its own because as you can see its in the middle of the street. So effectively taking out a lane of traffic so when the cars and trucks approach this, they would have to squeeze them into one less lane. So the fifth Avenue Merchants Association commissioned him begin to develop another traffic light that would be up on the sidewalk. This is a familiar one to date in large urban areas. It only had two lights, green and red. In part because there was a lot of confusion and it took quite a while for people to get used to what the different vitamin. If you through yellow in there that just added to the confusion. Early to light signals, early three light signals, i should say, the yellow appeared while the red was still on. It was a signal that the green was going to come on, just sort of the opposite of what it is today. This just gave drivers license to sort of russian the green. They took off before the green even appeared. New york lived with us into the 70s actually. It took a while before this three light system that we have now was more or less universally adopted in this country. And again, probably because the federal government played a role in sharing the cost of installing these, we can call them modern signals. And standardizing them and getting people to understand how they should behave when theres a traffic signal. Safety on highway they dont have traffic lights on most highways, especially the interstate so how do you regulate traffic there . Its mostly done with lines between the lanes and line separating oncoming from ongoing traffic. And early in the 20th century that will roads had no markings at all. You could imagine, they start basically for nothing. That was very dangerous especially when a blind curve was coming up. It was a tennessee of the drivers to hug the inside curb an ecosystem is coming the other way, bad news. The story, and some people consider it impossible sum it up in michigan noticed a milk wagon driving along an old country road one day and was leaking milk out of one of the containers and a trip a white lie behind it and that is simply the idea to put a white line down the center of the road anyway, white lines begin to appear in upper michigan in 1917. As you know today we got on the interstate the white lines are on the right. Is a solid white line marking the right edge of the road, which is good come especially at night because you can tell how to keep from going off onto the shoulder. The yellow line on your left keep you from going off on to the median or into oncoming traffic when there isnt a median. It took quite a while, literally decades, to standardize something so simple as this, something that is almost invisible to us today. We just get used to it and we take it for granted but if you just think driving a very dark conditions were very windy conditions, its a real, real lifesaver. Just look at the red graph, the line is superb, population. The number of accidents started going exponentially the way automobiles and drivers did. This is a natural initial growth hundrekerf. It starts leveling out or jiggling around. It drops during world war ii and goes up, start recovering after the war but then it starts peaking again. Well, what happened around the late 60s and early 70s . The reason it be grand then, two reasons. One of the main ones was brock heger published a book persons were talking at the bookstore this is relevant, act i should say. His book unsafe at any speed readymade the automobile the safety vehicle that is today in the sense of having a Steering Wheel that doesnt entail people in an accident, having dashboard that are somewhat soft, having that airbags but eventually airbags came out of this same philosophy. Seatbelts. Before ralph nader, seatbelts and other Safety Devices in the car were an extra package. He had to pay extra for them. Let me talk about bridges a little bit. Bridges are kind of symbolic of infrastructure as much as drones are. Is a bridge. It looks like its a fairly ordinary bridge. Is it safe to visit unsafe . Well, this is the minneapolis interstate highway i35 w. Bridge that became famous in 2007 when it collapsed suddenly during rushhour traffic. It took everybody by surprise. He was a bridge a that stood for 40 years, had been inspected regularly as was a federal requirement, and yet this happened to it. This is what is not supposed to happen to infrastructure. The accident, the cause of the accident was traced to the inadequate design. Something that shouldve been caught but wasnt. It was a very sad occurrence. We dont want this to happen, obviously. What happened after that accident was very interesting, because a replacement bridge was built within about a year, something we are not used to, that you can get a bridge built in such a relatively short period of time. This was the drawing and the plan of the replacement bridge. There was a timeline set up. The bridge was built on time. In fact, before the expected delivery date, and it was done on budget. Wasnt over run, and its at the Saint Anthony falls bridge is what it is called today. Interestingly, when a bridge actually does occur and when the bridge is rebuild at the same location, usually we see the bridge, replacement bridge looking quite different from the original one. Obviously, their psychological reasons we dont want to remind people of the accident. That up at night, aesthetic. And salsa got a lot of work all the smart features. Its called the smart bridge because when it starts snowing and icing up in minneapolis, it automatically starts spraying deicing components and detects problems with the bridge. A smart bridge. How do we pay for things like a replacement bridge over paving roads are building a new bridge, expanding our highways and so forth and so on . Thats really probably the biggest topic in washington these days. It should be part of a National Debate of the president ial campaign. So far it hasnt risen to the level of that. Its not a federal problem entirely. The federal government only contributes about 25 to the cost of infrastructure. Here we are really talking about all levels of government contributing. Estates, you know, we pay state taxes, we pay state wrestling taxes and so forth. And locally we pay taxes and some localities also charge tax on gasoline purchases. But anyway, the federal government only pays one out of every four, onefourth of the total cost. Typically the states or municipalities will apply for grants from the federal government. Where does the federal government get its money for this . Is something called a Highway Trust Fund which was established with the interstate highway act, that federal aid of 1956 act. And the Highway Trust Fund is totally dedicated to highways and roads. There should be a few footnotes but they are really minor. The main revenues into the Highway Trust Fund our gasoline taxes, could say fuel taxes because diesel tax. There some minor taxes, sales taxes for trucks entered and so forth, but the bulk of it is gasoline and diesel taxes. The gasoline taxes are in the were up 63 as we see on this slide. This has been a growing problem for over two decades, that the gasoline tax, the federal gasoline tax, has been an 18. 4 cents a gallon since 1993. That means the revenue into this fund has been pretty much frozen at that, because of that. That means that all the new infrastructure problems that we hear about, expansion of roads and so forth, there is no room early in the budget to do that stuff based solely on gasoline taxes. And if were going to continue to improve and maintain infrastructure into condition that we would like it, then were going to have to look elsewhere. The National Place to look is just to raise the gasoline tax natural place. It hasnt been raised, it hasnt kept up with inflation own needs. But people in washington, those who set these rules, they have a bad taste for raising taxes, period, at least a gasoline taxes. So theres a lot of talk, and this is history of the gasoline tax, and you can see where it is flattened out at 18. 4 cents, since 1993. So what are the alternatives to a gasoline tax to raise more money for the Highway Trust Fund . Well, theres a whole bunch of them that are becoming, discussed, because it looks pretty clear that the federal government isnt going to appreciably change the source of revenue, not going to increase the tax. The reason that the federal tax lien tax is not bringing in as much revenue is not only because its been flat in its rate, but its also because the government has been really working in opposition to itself. Its been encouraging hybrid vehicles. Its been encouraging all electric vehicles. Its been encouraging more fuel efficient vehicles. All of these of course bring down gas consumption. Bringing down gas consumption means that gas tax revenue is brought down also. This is one of the main reasons why we dont see any growth in that. The government is, furthermore, promoting these other alternative Motor Vehicle modes by giving tax credits and so forth. It looks a little complicated but its pretty simple. You can see on the right where the revenue into the fund is flat. Those green peaks, thats what the government took from the general fund or from some other source and infused it into the Highway Trust Fund. And if you follow washington politics at all over the last year or two, every now and then theres a deadline, a precipice, a cliff that were going to go over. And this is one of them. Oldies ad hoc fixes over the course of a think it was some number of years, there was a short term legislation, three dozen shortterm bills that did things like infuse more money and extend deadlines. Estates also tax the gasoline as i mentioned. The states. This is to show how buried it is. The yellow states are generally double taxation states as far as gasoline tax is concerned. Rates are high and blues are in between. States have, lately, been doing an awful lot in this area. They have been raising gasoline taxes. North carolina had an increase just recently, that the legislation mandated last year. Sometimes its actually gone down because the way the legislation is written with its tied to a certain index. But generally speaking its actually a state tax that is greater than the federal tax. Sometimes by a factor of two or three. So the federal government is seen as a villain are often in all this but, in fact, the states are in many cases asking for more money from the gas purchase or the fuel purchase. And fuel purchases, and it is a report card for americas infrastructure and grades conditions, not only means potholes but congestion. Roads, bridges, transit, and all the infrastructure and roads and bridges in representative categories havent done too well in the course of the report cards, and these grades mean poor, mediocre, not something to be proud of as a nation or a driver, something you dont want. Individual sections of the American Society of Civil Engineers have their own grading programs, North Carolina, thought this would be of interest, the North Carolina section grades our roads better than the national average. It grades our bridges worse than the national average. They might have to do with the bonner bridge which has been an ongoing issue on the coast. Overall the infrastructure in North Carolina is given a c grade which is mediocre but better than average, the national average. None of us should be proud of this or the National State of our infrastructure. The amount of money needed to bring things up even to acceptable standards is generally astronomical. I didnt mention it but on the previous slide, i will go back to that. I dont know what happened there. I am glad i am near the end so we wont worry about that. But notice on the bottom, 3. 6 trillion is the estimated investment in infrastructure that is needed by 2020 and that is only a few years out now. The whole federal budget, the whole federal budget for one year is 4 trillion approximately so we are talking about a lot of money and it is not clear where this would come from or how it would be raised, whether by taxes or anything else so there are beginning to be talks about what can be done as alternatives to the traditional means of finding money for these infrastructures. I mentioned higher fuel taxes, that is a nobrainer, sort of obvious, citizens or elected officials, there is increasingly talked about mileagebased, you are going to be taxed on how many miles you drive in your vehicle per year and this is under development, california and oregon actually have test programs going on as we speak about this. The department of transportation, the Us Department of transportation is offering grants to states and other groups to develop ways of implementing this which means there is a lot of emphasis to switch over to this method. Obviously there are questions of privacy, questions of peoples whereabouts being tracked and so forth so this needs quite a bit of opposition and it will be a debate that will drag out over years if not a decade or so. Public private partnership is another way of funding the infrastructure that has been talked about increasingly. The idea is to get somebody other than the government, other than the citizens through their taxes to pay for the infrastructure and the way this would work, you want a new highway, find some investors who are willing to invest in this, make it a toll road, they collect your tolls, get a return on their investment and everybody should be happy. The state gets a new road, investors get a return on their investment, this has been done in quite a few places, but there have also been bankruptcies in this model. It is not clear what is going to happen. Proactive maintenance, too often, we wait until there are lots of potholes until we repave a road. That isnt the way to go because by the time you get to that stage it is going to be much more expensive than if you had done a good job all along. There are ways of figuring out how close to being 100 than asphalt is on a given road than in anticipation of that, we pave for roads and save money and get for all practical purposes a new road at the same time. In we have to increasingly look for solid initial workmanship of a good time, not shoddy workmanship, but well done. My neighborhood there is a road, short stretch of road with a lot of plot holes that we paid a couple months ago and everybody is happy, potholes again after literally two months and i attribute that to the fact that it was not good workmanship, either the materials were inferior or the workmanship was inferior or it was done in a condition where you dont lay down asphalt, namely it was too cold but whatever the reason, who is going to pay for it now . There should be fair and honest contrast if a city like durham is going to issue a contract for a paving job they should get what they pay for. And if it is not done correctly, what should happen is they should redo the job at contracted expense and this goes for large jobs like interstate highways and so forth. There are numerous examples like this and in some cases outright fraud and corruption. The party should be accountable for what they contract to do. This will help us save money and accomplish the same end as raising taxes if done properly. With that, i will close down here and hope i have inspired some questions and as i say this is a quick the book covers these kinds of things and more and if you have any questions i will try to entertain them. Thanks for your attention. [applause] im wondering what you thought about solar panels on highways or Something Like this. You mean the ones where you drive over . They soak up the sunlight and there are solar cells, wondering what you thought of that. If they prove to work effectively than it is a good idea. Highways are obviously open spaces, but they are only going to generate energy if the traffic above them is not congested. When that road gets congested it would be effectively like big clouds coming over and blocking the sunlight. I dont know a lot about that technology. All technology usually has its pluses and minuses, you have to make decisions whether to adopt this or do more study and so forth, but Something Like that has potential. I wonder if your research turned up any convincing arguments why we drive on the right side to q i understand and a lot of this stuff depends on what you read, henry ford in making the model t put the Steering Wheel on the left side which made people drive on the right side. As i pointed out there were no rules of the road when the automobile was first introduced so i have seen it introduced to the model t automobile. The big problem with increasing the vehicle tax would be detroit or us or both. I didnt mention detroit, did i . The automobile dealers lobby like everybody else does, everybody should want the same end in the situation, they should want good roads but it is human nature to want to have good roads but not have to pay any more than the next guy or ideally most peoples minds including corporations in detroit, to pay less then the other guy so it is a battle of lobbyists in washington to a large extent. Trucking companies for example are constantly arguing lobbying for longer trucks, heavier trucks and lately they have been lobbying for Truck Drivers who are younger, 18 who dr. The biggest trucks on the road. Many people see these as safety problems but the lobby pushes for this because there are issues that they have. What about rail traffic as an alternative . I deliberately limited my book to what i know best in roads and bridges, we actually, our rail traffic is janus faced in this country. As far as freight, the rail system is pretty good, efficient. And of course moving freight by rail is good because it gets truck off the road. Passenger rail is an embarrassment on a rural stage, japan has its bullet trains, france has its tgf, china has almost overnight brought out massive systems of fast trains, we just havent done that. There are little efforts here and there. Our train on the northeast corridor between roughly washington dc and boston doesnt live up to its promise of going fast, the roadbed is in Poor Condition and a lot of what i have said about roads and vehicles could be said about Passenger Rail system in this country. And obviously it needs a Large Capital investment to bring it up to world standards. Airports are in the same situation. Some of our airports have been described as third world country airports. La guardia airport in new york city where people fly into, what new yorkers like to call the financial capital, the entertainment capital, a very big embarrassment not only the airport itself but the surrounding infrastructure. We have a long way to go. We built up our infrastructure very well, but now we are at the stage we have to maintain it or replace it and that is not so glamorous. Generally our appetite for tearing something down and building something new in its place, in that case politicians can cut the ribbon and get a lot of credit. Few politicians cut a ribbon for filling a pothole. Infrastructure particularly well, what things do they do . If you look at the American Society of Civil Engineers, i cant think of a single state that has graded its infrastructure that much differently from the national. North carolina is a little better, but that is the kind of difference, the differences, not that much, not enough to talk about. California has tried it but they get into trouble because they borrow money. That is another way of paying for infrastructure. But you go into debt, that is one of californias problems right now. The simple answer to your question is no. Other than in isolated categories but overall basically no. You had a question. You mentioned safety. Are there other countries with Better Safety records than the United States now . The change not the developing countries. They are generally much worse. I would have to look at that is that graph where i said look at the red line and not the other one. That is what you would have to look at. That would be the fair comparison. You would not want to look at absolute numbers like the red one. I dont remember having seen those numbers recently, but they are very there very well may be. I am hesitant to say yes or no because i havent looked at that specifically. In germany they drive very fast. I dont know how much that affects their accident rate. It is interesting. At the peak, highway deaths were at 55,000 in this country in absolute numbers. Now they are down 33, 34,000. To put it in some perspective, that is about the same number of deaths from firearms per year. That is apples and oranges, but comparing things, you are going across cultures, going across all sorts of different boundaries, it is not always easy to make comparisons and if you can make them you do make them but what does it really mean . You had a question. How hard is it to tell the bridge is in trouble . If you inspect it correctly, all bridges in this country are over 20 feet long technically, are supposed to be inspected at least every two years, those that are showing signs of trouble, it should be sort of a cookbook thing, take a list and check off, but in this case of the minneapolis bridge which is one that is used a lot as an example these days, it got relatively good marks, didnt get troublesome marks and yet there were signs that it was in trouble, in particular bending going on in some of the steel that was not recorded or reported properly. That would fall into the category of human factor. Your information is only as good as the people producing it. I was going to ask you to comment on the difference between a roundabout and a Traffic Circle. It seems new jersey is taking out Traffic Circles and putting in roundabouts. All of this stuff is sort of fashionable. Jersey has historically had Traffic Circles i think they call them, a roundabout is more of a british term. We are adding them here in durham and North Carolina. I dont think there is a great deal of difference, but i use the terms synonymously. You could draw distinctions. You had a question. The politics of infrastructure, what im thinking of is Road Construction in North Carolina is a political animal. Next to universities, there is always competition between west and east and piedmont and the Competition Among states is equally strong. The resolution of that beyond the engineers and economists ability. I do discuss it here and there. I give examples of corruption, really bad practices and document them. The answer is yes but it is not highlighted in the book, put it that way. It is there. What about light rail is proposed here. Does that have any real impact . That is a political issue. The goal is using traffic and all that stuff. Depends on who you talk to. I havent followed it that closely. People call me a bridge person. The previous question i know how people fight for bridges and so forth but i know about the light rail system, and it has been going on almost as long, the debate about it has been going on almost as long as i have lived in North Carolina. At times it has made sense and other times it hasnt made any sense and i am not sure where it stands. I know at one time to incorporate raleigh and the airport, that is no longer part of it. It would be interesting to look into why the change was made, that would give insight into motives and so forth. I only know what i read in the paper. You had a question. I wanted to ask about trucks as you say you are a bridge person. I can talk about trucks going over bridges. And so i wonder. I only know in this case what i saw on pbs or someplace or other a couple years ago about a situation involving an elevator in philadelphia and wondered, has badly deteriorated and they are putting in sister beams evidently to keep it from falling in. I wonder if you would correct that at all. I dont recognize that case but there was a case in wilmington, delaware where it bridge started leaning because some soil problems nearby, but i dont recognize that example. The falloff more generally then, if your book addresses this, what are in serious condition as in high 90 collapse in new york or minneapolis collapse . Minneapolis was 2007, and for many people that is the one that is highest in consciousness because nothing like it has happened since forgot in the same publicity so that gives us a sense we are talking about rare events relatively speaking. The big picture over the long span is an accident of that kind occurs once every 20 years, for a totally different reason than all the historical reasons. That makes it difficult to pick what is going to happen but there are signs you can look for. If for example a certain type of bridge is being made longer and longer and longer and there are efforts to make it look slender and slender or, prettier, that is a sure sign that that is something to watch. How do you watch it . You ask experts if there is a design proposed, how good is the design . There are historical examples where that situation has arisen and when the powers that be got the answer they didnt like they went to another consultant who did give them the answer they were looking for in the bridge got built and collapsed. These are again political on a certain level, people psychology, probably not a popular word, human nature. Im a fan of your work on evolution of divine and i want to know how infrastructure is going to start to evolve as we adopt Driverless Cars and driverless public transport. How do you think the roads are going to change as we get these things off the road . Get from the awful roads out from under the drivers. I do have a chapter on that and that technology is moving pretty quickly. Autonomous vehicles, self driving vehicles, the technology is almost basically here. Becomes a Public Policy question at this point. Our local laws written such that there has to be a driver in the car and what does the driver mean . Do the laws defined driver as a human being so you get into those issues. Remember the little scooter, you still see them in malls. It will be a question of whether there is going to be a will to have these cars, these vehicles. You could work for google or somebody but what are you going to do . Use it as a passenger. That is the way that is the future of infrastructure. I mention the smart bridges, there is also increasing talk about materials like asphalt and concrete that can heal itself from cracks and things that seem almost sciencefiction now but these will come to pass. When something new is designed do they ever think about upkeep . The example in boston, they built all these roads undergrounds, but what is going to happen in 30 years to those roads . Engineers, good engineers, because they recognize what they build isnt without fault or vulnerabilities, when you are pushing for a new bridge, mostly it would be the politicians and people acting like politicians, they usually want to present something as inexpensive as possible, so they dont want to include the cost of maintenance. It is not a glamorous topic. The same problem with building a new building on university campus. The short answer is people are aware of it. You can get numbers all over the map but i heard the maintenance costs on a bridge can be 4 a year, 4 of the stated cost. Usually the stated cost of the bridge also doesnt include finance charges, interest charges and so forth so these numbers can be very misleading, very unrepresentative of what the real cost is. So the answer is yes, people think about it. Do they do anything sensible about it . No. Everybody who wants to give money to a university often want to build with their name, they dont want the janitors closet with their name but that is what keeps the building, that is where the light bulbs get changed, where it gets cleaned. Okay. You mentioned bridges. I may or may not have a comment about this. Very nice bicycle bridge over i 40 in southpoint shopping center. As i understand it, it is a great bridge, very expensive, 7 billion sticks in my head, dont know if that is accurate. Hard to see where 7 million go. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That is a disappointing bridge to me because the lines are not graceful, the transition i should say
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