Infrastructure Megaprojects: Communication

Think about what your life would be like without a phone, without television, without internet access, without books, without music. Really sit and consider that for a minute. I'm betting that if you're reading this, you can't even imagine what you'd do with most of your time. Now imagine your life to date without those things.

Will anyone dispute that information is a necessity in this world?

The US information infrastructure is pathetic compared to most of the developed world. But it's fixable! Estimates have Google Fiber costing about $1,500/home to install. Figure 100 million homes in the US, and to wire the country with high-speed fiber would cost something like $150 billion. Even if it's double that, it's trivial on the scale of projects we're talking about. And following the Google Fiber model, it should be possible to supply most households with free high-speed internet access, only charging for higher bandwidth connections.

But it shouldn't stop there. Wired communication is only part of our information consumption. Right now there are a large number of incompatible cellular networks in the country. How much could we save by standardizing those networks on a single interoperable technology? Think about that. With appropriate leasing agreements in place, you could use anyone's tower, and just let the providers haggle over who pays whom on the back end. And once there's a single universal standard, expanding coverage and service becomes much easier and more efficient.

How much would it cost to pay everyone to switch their towers over to a shared technology? Figure there are 200,000 towers in the US, and we want to change out 90% of them to match the rest. At $150,000 per tower, the entire network would cost $30 billion to build from scratch. Assuming the electronics involved are only a tenth the cost of the tower, we're talking about three billion dollars. Chump change. Once a standard was in place, the government would probably spend more than that building additional towers just to improve coverage.

Unfortunately, we're now beyond my technical knowledge. Are there actual technical advantages to Verizon's approach over, say, Sprint's? Is one objectively better? Is there some technical reason what I've proposed is unworkable? I can't say. But anyone who's ever considered switching cell providers knows what I mean when I say that anything to reduce vender lock-in is a good thing.

Oh, and while we're at it, let's get rid of bundling the cost of a phone into my monthly bill. If it's a $600 phone, don't tell me it's a $200 phone with an early termination penalty if I leave before 2029. Just tell me it's a $600 phone. Finance it, pay cash, whatever, but vender lock-in needs to die.

No, that's not a megaproject. But let's do it anyway.

What does "close the border" actually mean?

I had this conversation on the Tennessean comments page, wherein Larry Tanner was saying we should "close the border". I asked for clarification, tried to provide some of my own, and everything got honest in a surprising direction. It was refreshing, when most people just spit out talking points and call each other names.

The original topic was Obama's requested appropriations to execute the law relating to the present refugee crisis. Keep in mind, I am not with the below advocating any course of action, nor am I condoning any of Larry's positions. I am simply saying we all need to be clear about what we're suggesting should be done.

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Larry: I wouldn't be against this if a portion, probably a large portion, was used to close the border to illegal immigration. Without the border being closed, this would only be a Band-Aid requiring more billions to care for the next wave of "children" which are sure to come.

Stephen: Define what the border being "closed" would look like. I mean, it's not like these children are crossing undetected or unimpeded. They cross the border and turn themselves in. What do you want, a giant two-thousand mile impenetrable wall?

Larry: Impede them. I know the feds won't do this but the Texans can and are doing this as we type. The gist of the letter was money. Take care of the ones that are here until we can send them back and stop completely any more from getting their grubby little toes in the Rio Grande.

Stephen: How?

Larry: Threaten the Mexicans with sanctions or tell them to stem the tide or we'll come to the south side of the border and do it for them. Might take out a few drug cartels while we're at it. You're the engineer, how would you do it? Excuse the question, I already know your answer.

Stephen: I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that solution. But I do think it's important to say that's what we're talking about, because I don't think many people have thought about it in those terms. We are talking here about invading and occupying a part of Mexico. That's not a trivial thing.

Invading Mexico has consequences. We need UN approval, or we risk a huge amount of goodwill from the international community. And we actually need that goodwill, believe it or not. We burned a huge amount invading Iraq illegally, and I don't think we could get away with that again.

Now, that said, Mexico is in large part a failed state, and I think we need new international legal structures for handling failed states. If we're threatened from Mexican territory, and the Mexican state can't control their territory well enough to eliminate that threat, we should have some legal means of recourse. I wrote about that here.

In a lot of ways, what we're contemplating is worse than the Iraq invasion, because there is no end game! It's not like we'll eventually leave. We're basically permanently annexing a piece of Mexico to create this hypothetical border zone. In so doing, American soldiers WILL die, and the financial costs will be enormous. The political will may simply not be here internally to sustain an occupation.

Now, compare the cost of your proposed invasion and occupation of part of Mexico to the cost of the uncontrolled border. Which costs more? I really don't know, but I'm betting it's not as easy a decision as it looked before we started talking about it in these terms.

Larry: Nothing is easy these days. I read your link and a lot of thought was put into it and I agree with you on a lot of things. I think you put more importance in the UN than most. Too much in fact. It isn't the organization it once was. If we don't address the southern border and secure it we may very well find ourselves in a position the Israelis are in today with Hamas.

Stephen: The UN as an organization isn't so bad, as long as you don't expect it to be more than it is. If the world is going to get together and say "this kind of thing is not okay", the UN is the place those kinds of statements happen. It has no actual power, nor was it ever intended to. So if we were going to occupy part of Mexico, for any reason, the UN would be where the world discussion about whether that was okay or not would take place.

What I'm really interested in is that we don't act unilaterally on something like this, which violates agreements we've made to not do that. We don't need to look like the bad guy any more than absolutely necessary, because that hurts us in the long run. And we need to make sure we don't set precedent that can be used against us. The UN is the forum for that kind of thing.

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Marsha Blackburn: On Municipal Broadband

Ms. Blackburn issued this press release recently. I'd like to ask the Congresswoman to clarify something. You are defending the states' rights, yes. But which rights, specifically? The rights to override the will of the people of a city or town? You claim to be in favor of small, local government. Yet the policies you are defending seem inconsistent with this. You are, in fact, defending the power of central government over local, and using the power of an even more remote government to do it.

I'd like to better understand how this is consistent. Why is it acceptable for the states to dictate terms to the people of their cities? I understand the legal structures are different, but that's a technicality and a cop-out. As a matter of principle, why should a remote central government be able to override the will of a local government in this one case, but not in others?

Please understand, I'm neither Republican nor Democrat, neither conservative nor liberal. Others may put me in such boxes, but when it comes to politics, I'm simply an engineer. I want things to work, I want to fix broken things. And like any observer, I can tell you that our broadband market is broken. Internet speeds in Tennessee are slow, service is abusive, and there is no market of competition to drive innovation. This map shows that the majority of the state doesn't even have two broadband options; you need far more than that to drive a free market! Further, Comcast is a clear example of regulatory capture and the continuous legalized bribery of our elected officials. We live in a government-sponsored monopoly, not a free market.

So if we live in a government-sponsored monopoly, what's so wrong with admitting that, and doing it right? It's what we do with every other utility, and they operate quite well. Several municipalities in Tennessee built local fiber networks before 2008, when the state legislature was 'lobbied' into making building such networks much harder. All these networks provide vastly better speeds than the state or national average. Some are among the fastest in the country, literally a hundred times faster than the rest of the state, and remain a point of technological pride for our state.

In short, municipal broadband works. Or at least it has some hope of working. It's perfectly clear that our current corporate ISPs don't, and never will.

So I have to ask, Ms. Blackburn, why are you fighting so hard to maintain the status quo? Right now, most of our state is locked into an unresponsive, dysfunctional monopoly, with no hope of competition to improve our lot. Those cities that have acted to improve the situation have succeeded; their citizens have better lives and more options. Yet your actions work to lock us into the same dysfunctional system. Why? What matter of principle could possibly justify such a hurtful act towards the people you were elected to serve? It's clearly not about central government vs. local government, we've established that already.

So what is it? Even if your constituents don't deserve modern utilities, they at least deserve an answer from you on this.

What's better than public transportation?

I'm a big fan of public transportation. The ability to survive without owning a car would lead to a tremendous reduction in cost-of-living. Reduction in traffic is in everyone's best interest. And not having to drive every day would let me get a lot more reading done. (Or more realistically, sleep.)

But here in Nashville, the bus system is more or less a joke for much of the city. I live in the city limits, and I could get to work by bus, but I'd have to spend ninety minutes instead of twenty, I'd get there late, and I'd spend more money. The many thousands in the exurbs are pretty much hosed except for the Music City Star, and even then your options once you reach Nashville are limited.

The more I think about it, the more I think the emphasis on trains and buses may be misplaced. Mass transit as a concept has one inherent limitation: each rider wants to stop at only two places, and no others. The more riders there are wanting different stops, the less convenient it gets for everyone involved. But the fewer stops the bus (or train or whatever) makes, the fewer people the bus is convenient for. You want a very high person-to-stop ratio. This only works for high-density end-to-end traffic paths, like an express from a park-and-ride, a commuter train, or a small local circuit in a high-density area.

But what about those of us (and I'd guess we're the majority) who neither live nor work in high-density areas? By definition, we collectively have more stops to make. To keep a high person-to-stop ratio, you have to reduce the number of people per vehicle. Perhaps to, say, five.

I argue that mass carpooling could have more effect getting cars off the road than any imaginable public transportation system. Say we're comparing three options: 60-person buses, 5-person carpools, and the default single-occupant car. If there are six thousand people commuting from Clarksville (to pick a random number and exurb), that's six thousand cars, twelve hundred carpools, or one hundred buses. Obviously both carpools and buses are vast improvements to traffic. And if everyone would ride the busses, they win over carpools. But not everyone will bus, because of the lack of flexibility.

So the next question is, how many people are willing to bus? How many are willing to carpool? And at what point does realistic carpooling get more vehicles off the road than busing? I won't bore you with my algebraic prowess (maybe later), but in our case the answer works out to be pretty interesting: regardless of the number of people involved, if just 25% more people are willing to carpool than are willing to bus, mass carpooling gets more vehicles off the road. This even though a bus holds twelve times more people! Since a carpool is far more convenient than a bus, I'd expect far more than 25% greater ridership.

Now let's consider cost. If you've got 100 busses, that's at least $30,000,000 in capital expenditure. Probably more. Each bus costs around $100/hr to run. Even if you assume they only run four hours a day (two round trips), that's $40,000/day, or $10,000,000 a year in operating costs. Assuming each bus lasts ten years, that's $13,000,000/year to get 5,900 vehicles off the road. This seems like a lot, but consider that adding a lane of interstate between Nashville and Clarksville would cost something like $150,000,000 and take several years.

How about gasoline? A hundred mile round trip at 25 mpg costs $15 a day. That's $22 million a year in gasoline saved by getting those 5900 cars off the road! That's a number so big I almost want to cry.

Further, consider that traffic can add half an hour to your commute each way. One hour a day saved, times six thousand drivers, is 1.5 million man-hours per year. Figure an average wage of $12/hr, and $13,000,000/year starts to sound cheap.  If we come up with a solution that makes a significant reduction in traffic that only costs, say, a million dollars a year, we collectively are coming out way ahead.

So here's the idea: we should pay people to carpool. But not at a flat rate. Put a million dollars in a pot, and declare that that pot will be distributed evenly among everyone who carpools that year, weighted by how many days they do it. Imagine how people would respond to an incentive like that! If only five people carpool all year, boom, easy $200k each. Pay it out more often than once a year, too. Say every two weeks. Within a few months you should reach an equilibrium point where exactly the right number of people are carpooling for the money being offered. After that you can see just how good the system is and how much it's worth.

As an added bonus, you could let people without cars sign up for the system, and basically turn every driver in the city into a government-provided taxi for the carless. The driver gets paid by the number of passengers, so its a win for them. And the car-free individual gets better service than busses.

The problem is making the matches. If you could get our hypothetical six thousand people to put their schedules in a system, a relatively simple computer program could make matches between them and make a huge dent in traffic. There are already such systems, but there's relatively little data in them. Paying people to participate will fix that. And with smart phones becoming ubiquitous, hitching a ride without advance planning becomes easy.

Now, how does this apply to the Amp? To be clear, I’m not presently taking sides in the debate over the Amp. Traffic on West End is abysmal, and something needs to be done. The Amp is, indeed, something. But what alternatives are there? I think this alternative is better from almost every perspective. Let's run the numbers.

Amp is projected to cost $4 million a year to operate, plus the $174 million startup costs. Add some for inevitable overruns, divide that over 20 years, and you get about $14 million annually. A comparable BRT system in Cleveland has ridership of around 14,000 daily. Each rider represents at most one car off the road, but maybe not even that. Depends on whether they count the same person going both directions as one rider or two. So being generous, we’re spending at least a thousand dollars per year to get each individual car off the road.

How about instead, we just pay people to carpool? If someone paid me a thousand dollars a year for my trouble, you can bet I’d be carpooling! Set up a good smartphone-based system to make ride matches, and I guarantee you you’ll get more cars off the road for less money. The result helps all of Nashville, not just one dense strip. And there’s zero construction disruption.

Obviously there’s a lot of variation possible. Who gets paid? The driver? The rider? Both? How do you keep track and minimize gaming the system? I don’t have all the answers. I can tell you that the system has to be set up well from the start; I've seen far too many systems like this half-complete with clearly zero ease-of-use consideration. The problem isn't trivial. But it is solvable, and I think this is what we should be looking at as an alternative to ripping up West End for a few years.

Footnote:

Suppose you have two forms of transit available to people. Cars, which hold 5 people, and busses, which hold 60. Suppose your goal is to get as many vehicles off the road as possible. For cars to get more people off the road than busses, more people have to be willing to use cars than are willing to use busses. How many more?

Define DB to be the number of people held by a bus, and DC to be the number of people held by a car. The ratio of people willing to carpool vs. number willing to bus must be at least (1-1/DB)/(1-1/DC)

If this criterion is met, more vehicles will be off the road by carpooling, even though each vehicle holds fewer people.

Google Fiber in Nashville

Nashville is now on the short list of potential Google Fiber expansion sites. Here's what that would mean: 

• Faster internet speeds for all, making every information-based company in Nashville more competitive
• Free internet connections for thousands of poor families, making job searching and education vastly easier, and relieving considerable burden from our libraries
• Better service offerings from AT&T and Comcast, as they're finally forced to compete and improve their dismal services.

I am not given to hyperbole, so please take it literally when I say that Google Fiber coming to Nashville would be one of the most cost-effective infrastructure improvements that could ever happen in this city. We need to do everything possible to make this happen.

Like all things, you're going to see some opposition. You can bet that that opposition will be supported by Comcast and AT&T. Even in Kansas City, where Google Fiber has changed everything for the better, some bought legislators are trying to keep Google Fiber from spreading to the rest of the state. They claim it's in the name of free markets, but how does preventing competition ever lead to free markets? Free markets are all about having as many competitors as possible!

If you see any such bills proposed here, look past the spin and recognize them for what they are: legalized monopoly for AT&T and Comcast, at the expense of all of us.

Quote-itis

Seriously, what is with this? Quotation marks indicate that something is not to be taken literally! They do not emphasize things! Signs I've seen lately, with my translations:

• "Look twice" for motorcycles (hahaha nope, just run them over)
• Flu shots given "daily" (wink-wink, nudge-nudge)
• "Select" Valentine's Day decor 50% off

That last one doesn't even make sense as emphasis! Who's typing these things? And "why"?

TN consumer tax form fail

Anyone tried to fill out a Tennessee consumer use tax return lately? Probably not, since it’s entirely voluntary. That might explain why it’s so horribly designed.

First, it has to be done online; there’s no paper version. That’s OK, but only if you do online stuff right. Second, there’s no way to save your work; you type in a huge amount of information, lose your browser session and have to start over. Third, all the data has to be formatted to an absurd degree. Cents have to be in a separate field from dollars, entered as a two-digit amount. Years have to be two-two-four digits. Miss one, and it won't accept your form, but also won't point out your mistake! Fourth, you have to enter a separate line item for every purchase. If you want to add a number of purchases all at one time, too bad; you have to do that one by one.

Oh, and they don’t take Visa, of all things. Say what you want about whether this kind of tax should or should not exist. But speaking as an engineer, if you’re going to do something, it should be done well.

Misspellings

My name is Stephen "S-T-E-P-H-E-N" Collings "C-O-L-L-I-N-G-S". I have to spell it out constantly over the phone or in person, because the vast majority of people would write "Steven Collins", or occasionally "Stephen Collins". (This, by the way, is a great argument for adding some sort of side-band for text alongside a phone call. An easy way to send text to the person you're talking to right now, landline or mobile, would be a huge improvement in my world.)

Of course, other misspellings are possible.

Eaton Collings is another good one. Until recently, my favorite was when I was listed in a wedding program as "Stephen Coolings". But this week, a gentleman from Quebec won the grand prize when my reservation got made under the name Heathen Collings.