Keep the New Engine, I’ll Take the Railroad
On February 6th,
2014 Vice President Joe Biden, while giving a speech in Philadelphia PA,
compared New York’s LaGuardia airport to a Third World country. His exact quote
was “If I blindfolded someone and took them at 2 o’clock in the morning into
the airport in Hong Kong and said “where do you think you are? They’d say, this
must be America. It’s a modern airport. If I took them blindfolded and took him
into LaGuardia Airport in New York, you must think I must be in some Third
World country. I’m not joking” Biden said.
The Vice President was
commenting about America’s infrastructure, and how far it has been allowed to
deteriorate. He is correct, our infrastructure keeps slipping. Where once we
led the world in energy, highways, rails, dams, ports and aviation, we are now
being surpassed by other countries. Think about the countries that have high
speed rail service to transport commuters, what do we have? Amtrak.
Really? Is this the best we can do, as the most powerful nation in the
world? The other day the Vice President was in Philadelphia for a big press
conference touting the new more powerful locomotives. Yes, Amtrak states that
they will use less energy and the new “regenerative braking system” will feed
energy back into the power grid, which is all wonderful and definitely a
positive, don’t get me wrong. But both the Vice President and Amtrak should
have stated the cold hard facts like “we are proud of our new locomotives, but
we are so far behind other Industrialized Nations. We need to have high speed
rail service across the country”. They should have been apologizing for having
their heads in the sand for so long that now we need to not only build the
infrastructure for the high speed rail, but in order to outpace our competitors
we need to develop the next generation equipment and infrastructure that will
once again make us a leader in the world”. These are the truths they
should have been telling the public.
Which brings me to my
next point. I am all for aesthetics, but was the Vice President really talking
about improving the components of the infrastructure or the gift wrapping. We
have all heard the phrase “you can put lip stick on a pig but it is still a pig”.
Well isn’t that what Amtrak did? Let’s put a new shiny train engine on the line
and people will think we are improving. Well let me say, not me! Politicians
think that by packaging something in a pretty package it will make everything
hunky dory. How is that working for our education system? For years we have
been spending millions of dollars on new schools. I know, I have performed work
on these projects. Education is not about building a better looking and more
modern architectural building then your neighbor. I mean, does an entry way,
mosaic floor to a school provide more knowledge to our children? Does a
football field with artificial turf and a nice school logo give the students
the information to develop technology to create a new cure for a disease
killing tens of thousands of people a year? Do mahogany stained book shelves
teach the average high school graduate to balance a checking account, or learn
how to invest in a retirement plan to prepare them financially for the
future. Aesthetics are nice, but they do
not solve any real problems. When our so called leaders begin to realize that a
nice brick building built at a reasonable price can provide the same ability to
learn as a multi-million dollar building then
we will begin to head down the path to progression. Remember we are all
Americans, we should not be competing to see who has the nicer building. We
should be working as a team to compete against the world.
It made me sad that
Vice President Biden was so concerned about the perception of an airport.
Things that some paint, cleaning and remodeling could solve. Why wasn’t he
talking about how we will implement new technology to modernize America’s
aviation tracking system. While providing great Wi-Fi and technology based
medians in airports and public buildings is important these items, are not
something that are going to make these places prettier, per say, but they will
help us improve our technology availability to the masses, as long as the
systems provide reliable service.
Shouldn’t he have been
talking about ways to reduce the cost of building new highways, while planning
construction projects so that the improvements are not out dated by the time
they have been completed? He should have been asking how we can replace and
update our electrical grid system, so it is the most reliable in the world. He
should have been asking how we can save and repair our dams, and how we can
provide access to our ports so that our goods can be transported in a timelier
manner around the world. He should have
stated that all of Washington is failing us, and leaving us further behind our
major competitors. And that as each day, month and year that passes without cooperation
on a long term plan the greater the chances are that we will not catch the
other industrialized countries.
We live in a time where
we have great business visionaries who are talking about colonies in space and
mining of asteroids and planets for minerals which can lead us to new products
and discoveries. We elect leaders to maintain the way of life that America has
built. Think about President Eisenhower’s vision of an interstate road system
where we could move products and services faster and more efficiently. But as
the great leader he was, he even knew that this system would need updating and
overhauled in the future, probably from the time he signed the interstate
highway bill. No nation can rest on its laurels, just as no business can rest
on its past accomplishments. Businesses are constantly innovating, improving
and designing the next great product or service. If you are complacent in
business, you will eventually fail or become obsolete.
Come on Mr. Biden, go
back to Washington and sit down with everyone there, put your heads together
and figure out how to get us back on track. But don’t send us a nice new shiny
locomotive and tells us everything is fine and we will be ok. Send us a
blueprint for a new railroad, one that will be faster, safer, more powerful
than any other country can muster. That will impress me, then I will be able to
say Washington is working for me. But just remember if you and all of our
elected officials in Washington can’t figure it out, then just get out of the
way and allow private industry to take the reins and rebuild the infrastructure
system. We may not have all of the
answers, but I can assure you that this is America and if we don’t have it we
will develop the answer to keep moving forward.
David E. Gemmill
D. E. Gemmill, Inc.
