Improving Infrastructure Can Improve the U.S. Economy
Booz Allen Hamilton Vice President Gary Schulman participated in a panel titled “Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure” on June 30, 2009, at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Ideas Festival. Schulman, who leads the firm’s U.S. government transportation consulting business, appeared alongside infrastructure expert Felix Rohatyn, president of FGR Associates LLC and a former ambassador to France; Clive Crook, a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine; and moderator Stephen Adler, editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek. After the panel, he added these insights.
"Rebuilding America's Infrastructure" panelists (L to R) Clive Crook, Felix Rohatyn, and Gary Schulman, and moderator Stephen Adler
How critical is rebuilding America’s infrastructure to rebuilding America’s economy?
It’s a part of it. Our infrastructure is deteriorating. A lot of it was built with suburban sprawl after World War II and it’s falling apart. But it’s not like a nuclear missile heading over the North Pole. It’s something we become accustomed to living with. But clearly, transportation infrastructure is the lifeblood of this country.
What role does President Obama’s stimulus money play?
If we didn’t have it, nothing would be getting done because state and local governments are going broke. Somebody has to pay. I don’t know that it created jobs, but it saved jobs that would have been gone otherwise.
You made a point of talking about high-speed rail on the panel. Why?
High-speed rail has really been put forth by the Obama administration as a big deal. Eight billion dollars is a good down payment on doing something. I think it could work, but regionally. Nobody’s coming to Aspen on a high-speed train, but there’s no reason California can’t have such a system, and there’s no reason you can’t upgrade the northeast corridor. You might be able get something in Texas and Florida and high-growth states.
You talked about economic modeling on high-speed rail that Booz Allen has done. It sounds like there are some economic benefits to high-speed rail.
We looked at a $200 billion investment over 10 years and found it could increase the GDP two-tenths of one percent. It helps, but if you compare it to the defense budget, it’s small potatoes. But it’s a step in the right direction because you’re employing people who are developing new technology.
You also hinted at some “smart infrastructure” that could reduce our overloaded infrastructure.
When your system is at 90 percent of capacity, it’s OK. When it gets close to 99 percent, it just stops. But when you can back it off in the other direction, it’s free-flowing. Traffic congestion increases when everybody starts to slow down because of what’s in front of them. If you can use technology so that people don’t have to slow down like that—so they can drive closer together because they know the brakes are going to be automatically actuated whether they’re paying attention or not—you could run cars much closer together on the freeways. It’s communication between the freeway and the car, and the car with all the other cars.
The same thing is true with airplanes. When an air traffic controller is looking at a radar screen, he has to take a 2-D picture and make a 3-D vision in his mind. If you have GPS technology, which is more accurate than some of our radar technology, you’re basically seeing in 4-D. You can actually get planes closer together and get more efficiency out of the system.
Given the state of the nation’s budget, can we afford to do what it takes to improve our nation’s infrastructure?
We don’t have much choice really, unless we want things to start falling apart.
Learn more about Booz Allen's participation in the 2009 Aspen Ideas Festival.
story posted July 1, 2009
