Public Infrastructure Investment and "The Point" Problem

I will be covering several infrastructure investment and asset management topics this week.  The first is a recent post from Tyler Cowen of the Marginal Revolution - -

"On infrastructure spending, I prefer to start with a frustration with current and recent infrastructure spending. It doesn’t seem very well allocated. It takes too long. We just spent a huge chunk through ARRA and couldn’t even clear up the backlogs at LaGuardia and Kennedy airports, the major gateways to America’s #1 city. We don’t seem able to build up nuclear power as significant protection against climate change. High-speed rail doesn’t seem like a good investment in the places where it is going through.

One can favor more infrastructure without thinking that “the point” is simply to demand and then get more spending. “The point,” in my view, is to improve the quality of our decision-making and our processes of implementation. If it were one or the other, I would rather improve the long-run quality than get the extra $$ today. So that is the issue people should talk and write about more often, and it seems odd to me to bring up the current $$ issue without insisting on the broader and more important point about massive institutional failure. It’s almost as if the writers don’t want to weaken their case for the extra $$ to be spent.

Alternatively, I would put it this way: I would like to be able to favor more infrastructure spending than I do (which is still to favor an upgrade).

(I also get nervous when I read 2013 claims that infrastructure spending will significantly boost employment. I doubt if it will make any more than a very small difference in long-term unemployment, the core of our remaining employment problem.)"

Cowen is absolutely correct regarding "The Point" - - and engineering and policy makers must start to address this concern.  The issue of improving the quality of the decision-making process and implementation rests squarely on the shoulders of engineers.  Organizations in the infrastructure development process spend too much time on the absolute dollars and not enough time on longer-term outputs of strategic decision making.  Engineering needs to make public infrastructure development and management more output driven.  What are the strategic goals (in terms of economic, social, environmental, etc.) and what is the implementation path to achieve these goals? 

More time, effort, energy, and brain power needs to go toward higher quality decisions that supports more efficient and effective resource allocation.