It’s obvious that one of the biggest challenges the president elect has to face is rejuvenating the infrastructure; let’s talk about traffic jams for a bit. Everybody hates them, we all want to avoid them, but they exist. They are an unintended consequence of personal driving. Some transportation planners often speak about the fact that everybody would benefit from a shift from personal driving to mass transit, but the reality is that that’s almost impossible, so the only thing left to do is improve the roadways, as good roadways are far more green than you would probably imagine. Less waste of gas, to speak about just the immediate consequence.
Obama spoke about this and other really important issues, in the first in his series of plans which he believes will be the change the American people voted for. This will of course require massive investments, and will have as a result the biggest national infrastructure project since the 50s. It will include repairs and rebuildings of roadways, pipelines, bridges, and railways. Aside from eliminating (at least in a satisfactory proportion) the time and fuel wasting road jams, this move will also create a lot of work places in constructions and supply.
But concrete and steel are not really the first thing that comes to mind when speaking about green initiatives; the elected president wants to improve efficiency in all federal buildings, by changing out of date and energy wasting lighting with greener and more efficient alternatives. This will cost quite a lot, but it will save the tax payers billions and billions of dollars in the long run; the focus of this project will be the cost efficiency. Also, better windows, cold buildings will get better insulation.
What’s perhaps even better is that all this upgrades will be conducted at schools too; this is yet another issue that has been pretty much ignored in the Bush administration. Most of the HVAC systems are also produced in the US, which will further help the development of the American economy.