Building Our Infrastructure: The Unseen Bits

Lots of discussion these days about the need to reinvest in our infrastructure, by which people often mean the transportation industry: roads, rail, airports, FAA control systems. The civil engineers are pushing this, and they are getting traction.  But yesterday as we traveled back to Reston on some interstates (most of which seemed in as good shape as I can remember, though the rest stops had their problems) I was struck by the thought that we're actually improving our infrastructure in unseen ways.

For example, I noticed the emergency call phones along the side of some roads.  And notices for getting emergency information by tuning the radio to a given frequency.  Surely those auxiliary portions of our transportation infrastructure are going to fade away, replaced by smart phone apps.  Rather than the expense of maintaining separate physical systems, our investments in cellular networks and the development of smart phones will provide more information faster at minimal cost. (Just as the PC was able to replace the dedicated word processor and the desk calculator.)

Consider the past: when I was a child each gas company put out a line of road maps, with some competition from Rand McNally and AAA. The maps weren't all that great, but they were all we had. Then the turnpikes came along, followed by the interstates, and the individual states started issuing maps.  Gas company maps went the way of "full service".  With the concentration of traffic on interstates, things like the emergency call phones and the radio information networks were economically feasible.  For trip planning, you could be a member of AAA and get "tripticks" (or something close), assuming you wanted to pay the money and wait for it to be delivered,

Then came the Internet and things like Google maps, which could plan a route in seconds and give alternatives in a way AAA never could.  Since we don't travel much, I was surprised for our recent trip that Google maps now gives updated information on construction and repairs, not to mention weather conditions and traffic flow.  All of this added information is free.

A final thought: having more information available means faster travel and fewer delays which means greater economic productivity.  I'm not sure how the economic statistics are going to capture those effects.