Three years ago, 100 Parisians volunteered to wear a wristband with a sensor in it. The sensors measured air and noise pollution as the wearers made their way around the city, transmitting that data back to an online platform that created a virtual map of the city’s pollution levels, which anyone with an Internet connection could take a look at.
It was simple, elegant, effective — and a peek at the urban future, when “smart cities” will collect data of all kinds (in all kinds of ways) and use it to make themselves better places to live. The Paris wristband project shows how these efforts are already taking place, as urbanites conceive of solutions to their cities’ problems through creative uses of technology. It’s urban resourcefulness at its finest.
But it may not last. The smart-city movement is at a crossroads. With the market projected to be worth $16 billion by the end of the decade, big companies like IBM and Cisco have much grander — and more profitable — ambitions than these small-scale projects. They’re going all-in on smart cities, with designs that supposedly do everything from end traffic jams to prevent disease outbreaks to eliminate litter. “Almost anything — any person, any object, any process or any service, for any organization, large or small — can become digitally aware and networked,” said IBM Chairman Samuel J. Palmisano at the 2010 SmarterCities forum in Shanghai. “Think about the prospect of a trillion connected and instrumented things —cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines …”
Indeed, the goal of these companies is not just to participate in the evolution of smart cities, but to connect and control virtually everything with massive operating systems that will run these cities in their entirety. “Everybody wants to be the architects of these systems because then you own them forever,” says Greg Lindsay, author of “Aerotropolis” and an urban-technology reporter for Fast Company. “You could say it’s sort of a land grab.”
Which of these futures should smart cities shoot for — the bottom-up model or the top-down version? A few weeks ago, Lindsay and Anthony Townsend of the Institute for the Future debated just that question. It’s easy to feel a knee-jerk reaction against the top-down, evil-corporate-overlord schema, but it has some things going for it. Rio de Janeiro is perhaps the closest thing the world currently has to a top-down smart city. Two years ago, IBM built an enormous, Mission Control-like facility for Rio, from which emergency services, transit, traffic, air quality, weather, contagious disease outbreaks, landslides and just about everything else is now monitored and managed. “Eighty interchangeable digital panels project live video feeds from 450 cameras,” is how the Daily Beast described it, “plus a dizzying array of tricked-out Google Maps of schools and hospitals, car accidents … and close to 10,000 GPS-tracked buses and ambulances.”
It’s an undeniably nimble and efficient method (assuming the system doesn’t crash), and will come in handy when Rio hosts both the Olympics and the World Cup in the next four years. But it also consolidates power in the executive branch and creates an unsettling scope of surveillance. Its greatest novelty, however, may be that the system effectively puts a corporation, IBM, partially at the helm of a city of 6 million people.
“It has something like 70 different city departments under it,” says Lindsay of Rio’s system. “You create this entanglement where IBM almost becomes part of the city government. You couldn’t untangle it if you wanted to.”
Not to mention the fact that IBM is a computer company, not an urban planning consultancy. In his debate with Lindsay, Townsend asserted that the companies vying for smart-city dominance “know nothing about cities.” In fact, he said, despite having one of the biggest smart-city divisions in the IT world, IBM just hired its first urban planner last year. Why so little interest in what makes cities tick? “That’s probably the whole arrogance of the technology culture,” said Lindsay. “I think the software industry sees urban government as having failed.” Their attitude is: “‘We will come into your city and we will fix it.’”
Monday, April 23, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Greg Mankiw doesn't understand competitio?n for investment
Greg Mankiw's column inSunday's New York Times makesthe case that competition between governments is a good thing, thatit makes them more efficient in the same way that competition amongfirms does. He paints it as also being about choosingredistributionist policies or not, with Brad DeLong and Harold Pollack both ably making the case that of course governments shouldengage in redistribution.
As author of Competing for Capital, however, I am more interested in the question of whether government competition for investment leads to more efficient outcomes. The answer, in short, is that it does not. Indeed, competition forinvestment leads to economic inefficiency, heightened incomeinequality, and rent-seeking behavior by firms.
Mankiw doesn't stop to think about what this competition looks like in the real world. To attract mobile capital, immobile governments offer a dizzying array of fiscal, financial, and regulatory incentives to companies in sums that have been growing over time for U.S. state and local governments, as I document in Competing for Capital and Investment Incentives and the Global Competition for Capital. His discussion centers on the reduction of corporate income tax rates, which is surely a part of the competition, but which is no longer an issue when an individual firm is negotiating with an individual government.
At that level, the issues then become more concrete: Can we keep our employees' state withholding tax? Can we get out of paying taxes every other company has to pay? Will you give us a cash grant? The list goes on and on. As governments make varying concessions on these issues, you then begin to see the consequences: discrimination among firms; overuse and mis-location of capital as subsidies distort investment decisions; a more unequal post-tax, post-subsidy distribution of income than would have existed in the absence of incentive use; and at times the subsidization of environmentally harmful projects. Moreover, many location incentives are actually relocation incentives, paying companies at times over $100 million to move across a state line while staying in the same metropolitan area, with no economic benefit for the region or the country as a whole .
Once upon a time, about 50 years ago in this country, companies made their investment decisions based on their best estimate of the economic case for various locations without requesting subsidies. On the rare occasion when a company did ask for government support, it was at levels that would appear quaint today. For example, when Chrysler built its Belvidere, Illinois, assembly plant in the early 1960s, it asked for the city to run a sewer line out to the facility--and it even lent the city the money to do it.
Today, companies have learned that the site location decision is a great opportunity to extract rents from immobile governments, and invest considerable resources into doing just that. An entire industry has sprung up to take advantage of businesses' informational advantages over governments--and, indeed, intensify that asymmetry--to make rent extraction as effective (not "efficient"!) as possible.
Finally, let's reflect on the force that makes this process happen, capital mobility. The fact that capital has far greater ability to move geographically than labor does, and that governments of course are geographically bound to one place, is a source of power for owners of capital. Modern economists, especially conservatives and libertarians, often have great difficulty acknowledging the role of power in market transactions, though their ostensible hero, Adam Smith, did not. To treat this power as a natural phenomenon rather than a social one, as Mankiw does, is dangerously close to saying that might makes right. But that's not the way things are supposed to work in a democratic society, or a moral one.
As author of Competing for Capital, however, I am more interested in the question of whether government competition for investment leads to more efficient outcomes. The answer, in short, is that it does not. Indeed, competition forinvestment leads to economic inefficiency, heightened incomeinequality, and rent-seeking behavior by firms.
Mankiw doesn't stop to think about what this competition looks like in the real world. To attract mobile capital, immobile governments offer a dizzying array of fiscal, financial, and regulatory incentives to companies in sums that have been growing over time for U.S. state and local governments, as I document in Competing for Capital and Investment Incentives and the Global Competition for Capital. His discussion centers on the reduction of corporate income tax rates, which is surely a part of the competition, but which is no longer an issue when an individual firm is negotiating with an individual government.
At that level, the issues then become more concrete: Can we keep our employees' state withholding tax? Can we get out of paying taxes every other company has to pay? Will you give us a cash grant? The list goes on and on. As governments make varying concessions on these issues, you then begin to see the consequences: discrimination among firms; overuse and mis-location of capital as subsidies distort investment decisions; a more unequal post-tax, post-subsidy distribution of income than would have existed in the absence of incentive use; and at times the subsidization of environmentally harmful projects. Moreover, many location incentives are actually relocation incentives, paying companies at times over $100 million to move across a state line while staying in the same metropolitan area, with no economic benefit for the region or the country as a whole .
Once upon a time, about 50 years ago in this country, companies made their investment decisions based on their best estimate of the economic case for various locations without requesting subsidies. On the rare occasion when a company did ask for government support, it was at levels that would appear quaint today. For example, when Chrysler built its Belvidere, Illinois, assembly plant in the early 1960s, it asked for the city to run a sewer line out to the facility--and it even lent the city the money to do it.
Today, companies have learned that the site location decision is a great opportunity to extract rents from immobile governments, and invest considerable resources into doing just that. An entire industry has sprung up to take advantage of businesses' informational advantages over governments--and, indeed, intensify that asymmetry--to make rent extraction as effective (not "efficient"!) as possible.
Finally, let's reflect on the force that makes this process happen, capital mobility. The fact that capital has far greater ability to move geographically than labor does, and that governments of course are geographically bound to one place, is a source of power for owners of capital. Modern economists, especially conservatives and libertarians, often have great difficulty acknowledging the role of power in market transactions, though their ostensible hero, Adam Smith, did not. To treat this power as a natural phenomenon rather than a social one, as Mankiw does, is dangerously close to saying that might makes right. But that's not the way things are supposed to work in a democratic society, or a moral one.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
High-Speed Collusion
However, the foundation for this success — a competitive market for high-speed Internet access — is in serious jeopardy. That’s because of a steady and unmistakable march away from competition and toward higher and higher levels of concentration in the market.
In the past seven years we’ve witnessed rampant consolidation. Sprint bought Nextel. AT&T merged first with Cingular and then with BellSouth. Verizon gobbled up Alltel. Comcast absorbed NBCUniversal. This trend finally paused when the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blocked AT&T’s takeover of T-Mobile.
The consolidation we’re experiencing isn’t a natural result of free-market forces. Rather, it’s the outcome of the FCC’s policy decisions, which discourage competition and place a disproportionate amount of the nation’s most valuable spectrum into the hands of just two companies: AT&T and Verizon.
Now one of these behemoths has asked the government to bless yet another unholy union. Verizon announced late last year that it intends to team up with a coalition of cable companies. In this deal, Verizon has agreed to stop competing with cable in exchange for the opportunity to buy a valuable chunk of “wireless spectrum” — the industry’s term for the public airwaves over which wireless traffic moves.
This latest deal to divvy up the market for high-speed Internet access would hurt consumers. We’d wind up with fewer options for broadband in our communities, higher prices, and increasingly unfair terms and conditions.
Verizon would control even more of the nation’s valuable mobile broadband spectrum, and it would cement AT&T’s and Verizon’s dominance in the wireless market.
Put simply, since Verizon controls more spectrum than any of its competitors, it doesn’t need this deal to meet growing consumer data demand. But it is the best way for Verizon to ensure that another wireless company cannot compete by using that spectrum to offer higher-quality services at lower prices.
The spectrum sale alone should be enough to tilt this transaction against the public interest. But the most stunning part of these deals is a series of cartel-like side agreements between Verizon and the cabal of cable companies — former competitors — to resell each other’s products. If all goes according to plan, you’ll be able to buy Verizon Wireless service from your local cable company, or get cable modem and cable TV service from the Verizon Wireless retailer around the corner.
That proposition would put an end to any hope for nationwide competition between truly high-speed Internet service providers. Competition benefits consumers when companies try to win subscribers from their competitors through better service and lower prices — not when they offer to sign up their own customers for their rivals’ services.
These agreements simply represent a pact between these companies to stay out of each other’s way, forever. They put former rivals on the path toward collusion rather than competition.
Consumers are already feeling the impact of the lack of competition as they get locked in to more expensive long-term contracts and bundles while alternatives are locked out of the marketplace.
There’s no reason this pattern of consolidation and consumer harm has to continue. The FCC and the Justice Department should protect consumers by stopping this deal. If the decision to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger was the down payment on future competition, preventing Verizon’s deal with the cable cartel should be the next installment.
In the past seven years we’ve witnessed rampant consolidation. Sprint bought Nextel. AT&T merged first with Cingular and then with BellSouth. Verizon gobbled up Alltel. Comcast absorbed NBCUniversal. This trend finally paused when the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blocked AT&T’s takeover of T-Mobile.
The consolidation we’re experiencing isn’t a natural result of free-market forces. Rather, it’s the outcome of the FCC’s policy decisions, which discourage competition and place a disproportionate amount of the nation’s most valuable spectrum into the hands of just two companies: AT&T and Verizon.
Now one of these behemoths has asked the government to bless yet another unholy union. Verizon announced late last year that it intends to team up with a coalition of cable companies. In this deal, Verizon has agreed to stop competing with cable in exchange for the opportunity to buy a valuable chunk of “wireless spectrum” — the industry’s term for the public airwaves over which wireless traffic moves.
This latest deal to divvy up the market for high-speed Internet access would hurt consumers. We’d wind up with fewer options for broadband in our communities, higher prices, and increasingly unfair terms and conditions.
Verizon would control even more of the nation’s valuable mobile broadband spectrum, and it would cement AT&T’s and Verizon’s dominance in the wireless market.
Put simply, since Verizon controls more spectrum than any of its competitors, it doesn’t need this deal to meet growing consumer data demand. But it is the best way for Verizon to ensure that another wireless company cannot compete by using that spectrum to offer higher-quality services at lower prices.
The spectrum sale alone should be enough to tilt this transaction against the public interest. But the most stunning part of these deals is a series of cartel-like side agreements between Verizon and the cabal of cable companies — former competitors — to resell each other’s products. If all goes according to plan, you’ll be able to buy Verizon Wireless service from your local cable company, or get cable modem and cable TV service from the Verizon Wireless retailer around the corner.
That proposition would put an end to any hope for nationwide competition between truly high-speed Internet service providers. Competition benefits consumers when companies try to win subscribers from their competitors through better service and lower prices — not when they offer to sign up their own customers for their rivals’ services.
These agreements simply represent a pact between these companies to stay out of each other’s way, forever. They put former rivals on the path toward collusion rather than competition.
Consumers are already feeling the impact of the lack of competition as they get locked in to more expensive long-term contracts and bundles while alternatives are locked out of the marketplace.
There’s no reason this pattern of consolidation and consumer harm has to continue. The FCC and the Justice Department should protect consumers by stopping this deal. If the decision to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger was the down payment on future competition, preventing Verizon’s deal with the cable cartel should be the next installment.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Fuel management for Asian offshore ships
The system was sold by Royston’s Singapore agent, Can Traders, to the Swiber Carina. It is being used to provide real-time fuel consumption details on board and simultaneously in the head office. In separate trials an enginei system has enabled users to achieve fuel savings of up to 20% and Swiber management is now hoping that similar savings will prove possible with its new support vessel.
The Swiber Carina was launched last year as the first in a building plan for 11-vessels that will provide oilfield support services around the Malaysian Peninsula. It is powered by two Cummins KT38 engines and the company management is hoping that the enginei system will enable its crew to operate them more fuel efficiently by maintaining a closer control of speed and power. It should also help the operations management deploy the ship in a way that avoids imposing instructions that adversely influence fuel demand.
The Royston enginei system can be applied to any diesel-powered vessel and works by accurately measuring fuel flow and matching the data with its GPS location. This makes it possible for the operator to continuously calculate a vessel’s ‘miles per gallon’ and to correlate the information with its activity and speed. Enginei is basically a measurement system that does not impose itself upon the vessel’s control systems in any way. However, by providing a simple bridge display it enables masters to be continuously aware of their fuel consumption. They are then able and to use their own judgment in setting their priorities and achieve an optimum balance between their speed and fuel consumed.
Data from the enginei system are made available to operations managers ashore who are provided with a more sophisticated display that makes it easier to deploy vessels in a timely and cost effective way. The data being used on the vessel, along with its GPS location, are relayed ashore where a satellite map display provides the ship’s superintendent with a real-time presentation of each vessel’s location and fuel consumption. Superintendents benefit from a graphic overlay that shows the amount of fuel being consumed at any point along its track. This enables them to deploy their vessels more efficiently and to avoid issuing instructions that might lead to unnecessary fuel consumption. It is also expected to prove attractive to ship operators in the region where fuel theft can be a problem.
The Swiber Carina was launched last year as the first in a building plan for 11-vessels that will provide oilfield support services around the Malaysian Peninsula. It is powered by two Cummins KT38 engines and the company management is hoping that the enginei system will enable its crew to operate them more fuel efficiently by maintaining a closer control of speed and power. It should also help the operations management deploy the ship in a way that avoids imposing instructions that adversely influence fuel demand.
The Royston enginei system can be applied to any diesel-powered vessel and works by accurately measuring fuel flow and matching the data with its GPS location. This makes it possible for the operator to continuously calculate a vessel’s ‘miles per gallon’ and to correlate the information with its activity and speed. Enginei is basically a measurement system that does not impose itself upon the vessel’s control systems in any way. However, by providing a simple bridge display it enables masters to be continuously aware of their fuel consumption. They are then able and to use their own judgment in setting their priorities and achieve an optimum balance between their speed and fuel consumed.
Data from the enginei system are made available to operations managers ashore who are provided with a more sophisticated display that makes it easier to deploy vessels in a timely and cost effective way. The data being used on the vessel, along with its GPS location, are relayed ashore where a satellite map display provides the ship’s superintendent with a real-time presentation of each vessel’s location and fuel consumption. Superintendents benefit from a graphic overlay that shows the amount of fuel being consumed at any point along its track. This enables them to deploy their vessels more efficiently and to avoid issuing instructions that might lead to unnecessary fuel consumption. It is also expected to prove attractive to ship operators in the region where fuel theft can be a problem.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Alem suicide highlights sponsorship system’s flaws
Alem Dechasa-Desisa left Ethiopia the day after Christmas last year. She headed for Lebanon, where she planned to make enough money to support her two children.
Within three months, she was dead, the victim of an apparent suicide. Even before her death, Alem had become something of a cause célèbre in some parts of Lebanese society and her case drew international attention.
Abused outside her own consulate in a videotaped incident, Alem was forced by a man later identified as Ali Mahfouz into a car as she lay screaming on the ground outside a place that was supposed to keep her safe.
At 33, Alem was one of 200,000 migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. That her case has garnered notice makes it an anomaly, but what happened to her is not.
Nearly every step of her journey from Burayu, her home outside Addis Ababa, to her eventual death in a psychiatric hospital in the Lebanese mountains is indicative of a failure in the haphazard Lebanese system that deals with the women who come to work in the homes and care for the children of many in this country.
Alem’s husband, Lamesa, told The Daily Star that he and his wife borrowed more than 4,500 Ethiopian Birr, around $260, to facilitate her travel. That’s about three months salary of the country’s average national income, and most of it went to a local broker.
He also said she was expected to pay the first two months of her salary to agents in Ethiopia.
Three years ago, Ethiopia imposed a ban on its citizens going to Lebanon to work as domestics. So Alem went through Yemen. Ethiopia’s consul general in Lebanon, Asaminew Debelie Bonssa, has estimated that there are between 60,000 and 80,000 Ethiopians in Lebanon, only 43,000 legally, having come before the ban.
That makes women like her especially vulnerable to human trafficking. Ghada Jabbour, head of KAFA’s Trafficking and Exploitation Unit, said that Alem was “seemingly a victim of trafficking. Not only had she incurred debts to come to Lebanon, but also she was smuggled outside Ethiopia because of the current ban. In addition, the sponsorship system in Lebanon tied her to a specific employer and did not grant her the freedom to decide her future.”
Trafficking is a tough crime to prove, and despite an anti-trafficking law passed in Lebanon last summer, not much has been done in the way of implementation. And women continue to come, trafficked or otherwise. In large part, this is due to financial imbalances. Even paltry salaries – several workers told The Daily Star of wages around $200 a month for fulltime work – can amount to a great deal in struggling home countries.
Lebanese authorities still grant visas to people from countries with deployment bans, and so Alem arrived, technically “undocumented” but very much part of the Lebanese “kafala” (sponsorship) system where work and residency is tied to a specific employer, even before she made it to the airport.
Because she was in the country illegally, Bonssa said she and others like her are hard to keep track of. Activists say even documented women are often afraid or unable to contact their embassies if they need help.
According to Hicham Borji, president of the union of workers’ recruitment agencies, there are around 450 licensed agencies in Lebanon. An optimistic estimate, he says, is that 100 of these agencies – that act as go-betweens between workers and employers – actually conform to the terms of their licenses. These include a stable location, a land line and a so-called “safe room” for domestic workers who may need to stay at the agency.
Alem’s agency – which was supposed to care for her when she was not with an employer, sent her to two homes. Both sent her back. Chadi Mahfouz, the agency’s director, delegated his brother Ali Mahfouz to deal with Alem after she returned from the second house.
Chadi Mahfouz told The Daily Star that his brother, now charged with contributing to and causing Alem’s death, is not an employee of the agency he directs. This means the agency was acting illegally – but it has not lost its license, in fact it has since become a member of the union.
After what he said were two suicide attempts – both after her removal from the second house – Ali Mahfouz brought Alem to the consulate, where he told staff she was mentally ill. Bonssa, who has since expressed regret at trusting Mahfouz, told him to take her to a hospital. It was outside the consulate, a place that ought to have been a refuge, that the beating took place.
Within three months, she was dead, the victim of an apparent suicide. Even before her death, Alem had become something of a cause célèbre in some parts of Lebanese society and her case drew international attention.
Abused outside her own consulate in a videotaped incident, Alem was forced by a man later identified as Ali Mahfouz into a car as she lay screaming on the ground outside a place that was supposed to keep her safe.
At 33, Alem was one of 200,000 migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. That her case has garnered notice makes it an anomaly, but what happened to her is not.
Nearly every step of her journey from Burayu, her home outside Addis Ababa, to her eventual death in a psychiatric hospital in the Lebanese mountains is indicative of a failure in the haphazard Lebanese system that deals with the women who come to work in the homes and care for the children of many in this country.
Alem’s husband, Lamesa, told The Daily Star that he and his wife borrowed more than 4,500 Ethiopian Birr, around $260, to facilitate her travel. That’s about three months salary of the country’s average national income, and most of it went to a local broker.
He also said she was expected to pay the first two months of her salary to agents in Ethiopia.
Three years ago, Ethiopia imposed a ban on its citizens going to Lebanon to work as domestics. So Alem went through Yemen. Ethiopia’s consul general in Lebanon, Asaminew Debelie Bonssa, has estimated that there are between 60,000 and 80,000 Ethiopians in Lebanon, only 43,000 legally, having come before the ban.
That makes women like her especially vulnerable to human trafficking. Ghada Jabbour, head of KAFA’s Trafficking and Exploitation Unit, said that Alem was “seemingly a victim of trafficking. Not only had she incurred debts to come to Lebanon, but also she was smuggled outside Ethiopia because of the current ban. In addition, the sponsorship system in Lebanon tied her to a specific employer and did not grant her the freedom to decide her future.”
Trafficking is a tough crime to prove, and despite an anti-trafficking law passed in Lebanon last summer, not much has been done in the way of implementation. And women continue to come, trafficked or otherwise. In large part, this is due to financial imbalances. Even paltry salaries – several workers told The Daily Star of wages around $200 a month for fulltime work – can amount to a great deal in struggling home countries.
Lebanese authorities still grant visas to people from countries with deployment bans, and so Alem arrived, technically “undocumented” but very much part of the Lebanese “kafala” (sponsorship) system where work and residency is tied to a specific employer, even before she made it to the airport.
Because she was in the country illegally, Bonssa said she and others like her are hard to keep track of. Activists say even documented women are often afraid or unable to contact their embassies if they need help.
According to Hicham Borji, president of the union of workers’ recruitment agencies, there are around 450 licensed agencies in Lebanon. An optimistic estimate, he says, is that 100 of these agencies – that act as go-betweens between workers and employers – actually conform to the terms of their licenses. These include a stable location, a land line and a so-called “safe room” for domestic workers who may need to stay at the agency.
Alem’s agency – which was supposed to care for her when she was not with an employer, sent her to two homes. Both sent her back. Chadi Mahfouz, the agency’s director, delegated his brother Ali Mahfouz to deal with Alem after she returned from the second house.
Chadi Mahfouz told The Daily Star that his brother, now charged with contributing to and causing Alem’s death, is not an employee of the agency he directs. This means the agency was acting illegally – but it has not lost its license, in fact it has since become a member of the union.
After what he said were two suicide attempts – both after her removal from the second house – Ali Mahfouz brought Alem to the consulate, where he told staff she was mentally ill. Bonssa, who has since expressed regret at trusting Mahfouz, told him to take her to a hospital. It was outside the consulate, a place that ought to have been a refuge, that the beating took place.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Aging transit systems grapple with repair backlog
Driven by high gas prices and an uncertain economy, Americans are turning to trains and buses to get around in greater numbers than ever before. But the aging transit systems they're riding face an $80 billion maintenance backlog that jeopardizes service just when it's most in demand.
The boost in ridership comes as pain at the gas pump and the sluggish economic recovery combine with a migration of young adults to cities and new technology that makes transit faster and friendlier than in the past. The number of transit trips over a 12-month period will likely set a new record later this month or next, say Federal Transit Administration officials. The current peak is 10.3 billion trips over a year, set in December 2008.
But decades of deferred repairs and modernization projects also have many transit agencies scrambling to keep trains and buses in operation. The transit administration estimated in 2010 that it would take $78 billion to get transit systems into shape, and officials say the backlog has grown since then. In some places, workers search the Internet for spare parts that are no longer manufactured. In others, trains operate using equipment designed, literally, in the horse-and-buggy era.
In Philadelphia, for example, commuters ride trains over rusty steel bridges, some of them dating back to the 19th century. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority - which operates subway, trolley, bus and commuter rail systems - is responsible for 346 bridges that are on average 80 years old. Officials said they may be forced to slow trains or even stop them from crossing one bridge that's 1,000 feet long and 90 feet above the ground if it deteriorates further, leaving stations on the other side without service.
A key power substation relies on electrical equipment manufactured in 1926. There's no hope for acquiring spare parts, so workers try to open the boxes housing the equipment as infrequently as possible to prevent damage from exposure to the environment.
"We're operating on a prayer on that line," Joseph Casey, the transportation authority's general manager, said in an interview. "If that fails, half of our commuter rail system would shut down." The system carries 125,000 passengers on weekdays.
The transportation authority doesn't have enough money to replace the bridges or outdated electrical equipment, Casey said. In recent years, the authority has spent $600 million on renovating elevated portions of a subway line that dates back to 1905, and $100 million to install a federally required rail safety system. Another $327 million was spent on new rail cars to replace 72 cars built in 1964. Some of the older cars - nearly 40 of which are still in service - are in such disrepair that passengers get soaked from leaks when it rains.
And yet passengers made 334 million trips on the transit system last year, the most in 22 years, despite a 9 percent fare hike. So far this year, ridership is up 3 percent, Casey said.
San Francisco's subway system, Bay Area Rapid Transit, faces many similar problems. Opened in 1972, BART was at that time the most automated subway system in the nation. But circuit boards and other electronic components for 449 original train cars - out of the system's total of 669 cars - are now 40 years old, no longer manufactured and often impossible to replace.
BART employees regularly scour eBay and other websites in search of after-market dealers who might stock the parts, said Tamar Allen, manager of BART's mechanical operations. When they find a dealer, they buy every useable part until "the well runs dry," she said.
And that's still not enough. Some cars have been cannibalized for parts in order to keep other cars working. Cars whose parts have been removed are still in use, but only when they can be sandwiched between other cars, Allen said. In some cases, employees have re-engineered parts when no replacements could be found, but it's a difficult process because there is no margin for error, she said.
BART plans to buy 775 new cars by 2023 at an estimated cost of $3.2 billion, but so far the agency has identified only about a third of the money - enough for the first phase of 200 cars, James Allison, a BART spokesman, said. Where will the rest come from? "We're working on that," he said.
The boost in ridership comes as pain at the gas pump and the sluggish economic recovery combine with a migration of young adults to cities and new technology that makes transit faster and friendlier than in the past. The number of transit trips over a 12-month period will likely set a new record later this month or next, say Federal Transit Administration officials. The current peak is 10.3 billion trips over a year, set in December 2008.
But decades of deferred repairs and modernization projects also have many transit agencies scrambling to keep trains and buses in operation. The transit administration estimated in 2010 that it would take $78 billion to get transit systems into shape, and officials say the backlog has grown since then. In some places, workers search the Internet for spare parts that are no longer manufactured. In others, trains operate using equipment designed, literally, in the horse-and-buggy era.
In Philadelphia, for example, commuters ride trains over rusty steel bridges, some of them dating back to the 19th century. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority - which operates subway, trolley, bus and commuter rail systems - is responsible for 346 bridges that are on average 80 years old. Officials said they may be forced to slow trains or even stop them from crossing one bridge that's 1,000 feet long and 90 feet above the ground if it deteriorates further, leaving stations on the other side without service.
A key power substation relies on electrical equipment manufactured in 1926. There's no hope for acquiring spare parts, so workers try to open the boxes housing the equipment as infrequently as possible to prevent damage from exposure to the environment.
"We're operating on a prayer on that line," Joseph Casey, the transportation authority's general manager, said in an interview. "If that fails, half of our commuter rail system would shut down." The system carries 125,000 passengers on weekdays.
The transportation authority doesn't have enough money to replace the bridges or outdated electrical equipment, Casey said. In recent years, the authority has spent $600 million on renovating elevated portions of a subway line that dates back to 1905, and $100 million to install a federally required rail safety system. Another $327 million was spent on new rail cars to replace 72 cars built in 1964. Some of the older cars - nearly 40 of which are still in service - are in such disrepair that passengers get soaked from leaks when it rains.
And yet passengers made 334 million trips on the transit system last year, the most in 22 years, despite a 9 percent fare hike. So far this year, ridership is up 3 percent, Casey said.
San Francisco's subway system, Bay Area Rapid Transit, faces many similar problems. Opened in 1972, BART was at that time the most automated subway system in the nation. But circuit boards and other electronic components for 449 original train cars - out of the system's total of 669 cars - are now 40 years old, no longer manufactured and often impossible to replace.
BART employees regularly scour eBay and other websites in search of after-market dealers who might stock the parts, said Tamar Allen, manager of BART's mechanical operations. When they find a dealer, they buy every useable part until "the well runs dry," she said.
And that's still not enough. Some cars have been cannibalized for parts in order to keep other cars working. Cars whose parts have been removed are still in use, but only when they can be sandwiched between other cars, Allen said. In some cases, employees have re-engineered parts when no replacements could be found, but it's a difficult process because there is no margin for error, she said.
BART plans to buy 775 new cars by 2023 at an estimated cost of $3.2 billion, but so far the agency has identified only about a third of the money - enough for the first phase of 200 cars, James Allison, a BART spokesman, said. Where will the rest come from? "We're working on that," he said.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Hunterdon Art Museum showcases handcrafted efforts of female artists
“Yeon Jin Kim: Spaceship Grocery Store” would seem, at first, to be more a product of technology than craft. It’s a video (you can call it up on YouTube), created by a Korean artist (born in Seoul in 1978), who got her master’s from Hunter College and did a fellowship at Yaddo in 2009.
The video follows an alien — it looks like two boomboxes and a VCR on legs — as it walks through an urban street, stopping by a store, passing through a bombed-out neighborhood and finally boarding a bus. The alien, the backgrounds and various 3-D props are drawn on paper or cardboard with a pencil, but the backdrop is actually a long scroll that the figures, pinned on Mylar fishing line, move past as the artist pulls them along.
That’s interesting, but hardly new — the “South Park” pilot created a remarkable illusionism with just bits of construction paper, so minimalist animation is pretty mainstream these days. But what is new is that Kim shoots her entire eight-minute movie in one take. Any glitch, like a figure getting hung up on a knot in the fishing line, means starting over. It’s as if every Kim movie is one of those long tracking shots John Frankenheimer made for “The Train,” which a film critic once described as “several minutes of action looking for a mistake.”
Kim has set up her apparatus — the little house models, the bus, the characters and other 3-D elements — in the small second-floor gallery where the video is displayed. The long scroll that forms the backdrop is there, too. No more than knee-high, the scroll is arranged around the walls of the room like a Chinese ink painting, which Kim says was her inspiration.
“Spaceship Grocery Store” is animation, but it’s also a hand-drawn landscape and cut-out figures — does that make them sculpture? — that take part in a sustained performance. The simplicity and childlike obviousness of Kim’s devices is evidently intended to remind us of her low-tech ingenuity. This is not “Wallace and Gromit” on a shoestring (or on a fish string), but a kind of parody of professionally rendered, smoothly coordinated animation. Most of which, as we all know, is made in Korean sweatshops these days.
In contrast, “Kirsten Hassenfeld: Cabin Fever” is immediately identifiable as handcraft: Hassenfeld deliberately refers to the pioneer crafts of quilting and making hook rugs with her work, which is assembled from scraps collected from of her daily life, such as straws, bottle caps, bills and envelopes, all of it filled out with reams of vintage wrapping paper. She finds the pre-“Mad Men” era wrapping paper on eBay; it is printed in pale greens and oranges, with cartoony little bunnies, deer, snowflakes and kittens.
Hassenfeld has split the first-floor gallery at Hunterdon into two spaces, with a wall of backlit wrapping paper punctured by a door in the middle. What you first see is a sort of polygonal chandelier shaped by plastic tubes and papered over with all sorts of commonplace ephemera. When you pass through the door, the walls are lined with flat collages made of tightly folded printed papers, receipts, etc; that she makes into bars and assembles into patterns that are at least a bit reminiscent of those on the old wrapping paper.
There’s a lace doily, almost 19th-century-wedding-cake feel to a lot of Hassenfeld, like there is to Kara Walker’s silhouettes. Her meticulously crafted chandeliers take on a stacked-volume shape that echoes Victorian lathe-turned furniture, and she’s fond of keepsake-like framing devices and hints of traditional embroidery, scrollwork decoration and cameos. Hunterdon has done many shows that speak to handcraft’s descent from the “women’s work” of a century ago, and this show fits into the series neatly.
Many female artists have seized on making art out of the detritus of daily life, in a puckish poke at consumerism and cheerful banality, but “Cabin Fever” seems more formal than that, as if it were more concerned with styles than it is with materials. Hassenfeld graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Arizona, and she’s been shown at a number of prestigious venues lately, but this is her first solo show in a museum.
The video follows an alien — it looks like two boomboxes and a VCR on legs — as it walks through an urban street, stopping by a store, passing through a bombed-out neighborhood and finally boarding a bus. The alien, the backgrounds and various 3-D props are drawn on paper or cardboard with a pencil, but the backdrop is actually a long scroll that the figures, pinned on Mylar fishing line, move past as the artist pulls them along.
That’s interesting, but hardly new — the “South Park” pilot created a remarkable illusionism with just bits of construction paper, so minimalist animation is pretty mainstream these days. But what is new is that Kim shoots her entire eight-minute movie in one take. Any glitch, like a figure getting hung up on a knot in the fishing line, means starting over. It’s as if every Kim movie is one of those long tracking shots John Frankenheimer made for “The Train,” which a film critic once described as “several minutes of action looking for a mistake.”
Kim has set up her apparatus — the little house models, the bus, the characters and other 3-D elements — in the small second-floor gallery where the video is displayed. The long scroll that forms the backdrop is there, too. No more than knee-high, the scroll is arranged around the walls of the room like a Chinese ink painting, which Kim says was her inspiration.
“Spaceship Grocery Store” is animation, but it’s also a hand-drawn landscape and cut-out figures — does that make them sculpture? — that take part in a sustained performance. The simplicity and childlike obviousness of Kim’s devices is evidently intended to remind us of her low-tech ingenuity. This is not “Wallace and Gromit” on a shoestring (or on a fish string), but a kind of parody of professionally rendered, smoothly coordinated animation. Most of which, as we all know, is made in Korean sweatshops these days.
In contrast, “Kirsten Hassenfeld: Cabin Fever” is immediately identifiable as handcraft: Hassenfeld deliberately refers to the pioneer crafts of quilting and making hook rugs with her work, which is assembled from scraps collected from of her daily life, such as straws, bottle caps, bills and envelopes, all of it filled out with reams of vintage wrapping paper. She finds the pre-“Mad Men” era wrapping paper on eBay; it is printed in pale greens and oranges, with cartoony little bunnies, deer, snowflakes and kittens.
Hassenfeld has split the first-floor gallery at Hunterdon into two spaces, with a wall of backlit wrapping paper punctured by a door in the middle. What you first see is a sort of polygonal chandelier shaped by plastic tubes and papered over with all sorts of commonplace ephemera. When you pass through the door, the walls are lined with flat collages made of tightly folded printed papers, receipts, etc; that she makes into bars and assembles into patterns that are at least a bit reminiscent of those on the old wrapping paper.
There’s a lace doily, almost 19th-century-wedding-cake feel to a lot of Hassenfeld, like there is to Kara Walker’s silhouettes. Her meticulously crafted chandeliers take on a stacked-volume shape that echoes Victorian lathe-turned furniture, and she’s fond of keepsake-like framing devices and hints of traditional embroidery, scrollwork decoration and cameos. Hunterdon has done many shows that speak to handcraft’s descent from the “women’s work” of a century ago, and this show fits into the series neatly.
Many female artists have seized on making art out of the detritus of daily life, in a puckish poke at consumerism and cheerful banality, but “Cabin Fever” seems more formal than that, as if it were more concerned with styles than it is with materials. Hassenfeld graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Arizona, and she’s been shown at a number of prestigious venues lately, but this is her first solo show in a museum.
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