A reminder on congestion and depressions

Asha Elizabeth Weinstein wrote her Berkeley dissertation about Boston transportation development from 1890 to 1925. Very interesting, Search the link. She is at one of my alma maters, if her bio is up to date. Great work.

This period is from the end of the long and beginning of the great Depressions. Boston is unique because even then they were digging like moles having started subways early.

During the 1920 period Boston knew they were in big trouble regarding city transportation.

This reminder about the importance of this history comes from China with nine day traffic jams.   When knowledge of where to move good suddenly expands, there is a terrible constraint on transportation, and a major Reset occurs.

How's that look from production spectrum theory?

Well, around the environs of Beijing there appeared a commercial trading web, the internet.  This is the start of an adaption process as traders attack the transportation network first with contract futures (and scheduling), then with  technology  in the roadways, including congestion pricing and all its side effects.

If we could map an integrated distance between the yield curve of trading information, and the transportation function, then see that trading info will swap futures to match the term structures of transportation, very left side skewed. The infonetwork pulling left to match, left toward lower actual growth.

The info web will be enhanced to replace futures contracts to freight scheduling, and that leads to a demand for congestion pricing, still on the web.  But the transportation network production is slowly skewed toward flatness, pulled right to higher actual growth.

In the end is a technological transformation of transportation. It will happen fast, and start suddenly. The good news is that existing vehicles get much of the gain with the simple dashboard device, seemly unused inventory today will still find utility and be moved.

Cars a few years old still have great utility in a congestion priced road system. Their cost comes down with the advent of the new technology, but they become very cheap to use for occasional but important meetings. This is the poor, they will benefit from the car surplus of the last cycle, even after the Clunkers for Cash, the used market still benefits the poor. Productivity gains way outpacing useless government perturbations. Poor benefit more than the average from efficiency gains in the roads.