Section 5: THE VAULT
The changing infrastructures of the American Dream culminate in “the Vault,” the iconic infrastructure of the 21st Century.
INTRODUCTION
19th Century
The most important infrastructure of 19th century America is the railroad. Like all growth infrastructures, railroads got their start in the largest cities. Railroads started in the most congested and expensive places because the need for cost-effective transportation was greatest here. The first rail systems were urban transit creating more functional city centers and new kinds of suburbs as the center grew up and out. These transit systems were always changing. They were followed by intercity rail and, over time, larger and more sophisticated interstate rail.
At each stage of the development ladder, smart transportation policy attracted investors facilitating construction of new infrastructures. Growth was fast and furious with new rail system improving or replacing earlier ones. American lifestyles were truly progressive then because we were always in transition to a more productive state. This non-stop transformation created unprecedented wealth. It made America the economic engine of the world.
The American Dream was built by an ever-growing number of working class Americans, most of them recent immigrants, building a better future for themselves and everyone else. These are the heroes of the iconic infrastructure image of the 19th century: The ceremony for the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, May 1869.
 The transcontinental railroad was the ultimate intercity infrastructure linking New York and San Francisco in several days travel. That was down from a few months before the tracks opened for business. A century and a half later, the steam engines have long been retired. But many rights-of-way are still open for business.
Although rail does not move too many people anymore—cars and airplanes did that more efficiently through much of the 20th century—America’s freight capabilities are still the envy of the world.
20th Century
The iconic transportation infrastructure of 20th century America—and shaper of the latest version of the American Dream—is the highway. The concept of limited-access roadways started with privately owned parkways in New York in the 1910s. Like urban railroads a century earlier, parkways evolved into a growing network. The most prominent of these we know as highways.
As it was with rail, highways were also profitable. Government bonds and sometimes direct taxes facilitated construction at each step of the development ladder. Although most highways were not built for profit, early on most paid their way with direct tolls and indirect benefits. But the need for subsidies continues to grow making building more of the same economically unsustainable.
The most consequential forward-looking highway was the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which opened in 1940. This turnpike was built to higher design standards and extended over longer distances than other divided limited-access highways. Growth was strong and fast sustained with tolls, which today can be paid electronically with E-Z Pass.
During the first few decades, cars and semis cruised along freely without congestion. A new frontier was indeed being conquered. As it was with railroads, working class Americans—many of them recent immigrants—built the turnpike. Good jobs lasted decades. Taxes and subsidies were not a big issue.
This is my choice for the iconic infrastructure image of the 20th century: a PA Turnpike photo from July 1942.
But the days of fast self-funded growth lasting decades, as was still possible and very profitable when the two photos above were taken, are now gone.
The photo below is a better representation of today’s transportation world. Urban America is becoming Los Angeles: Unending strips of concrete and asphalt freeways (California-speak for highways) surrounded by unappetizing low structures and very infrequent high-rise clusters. This is a recipe for growing congestion and sprawl as far as the eye can see.
The automobile is not a tool for freedom of movement and prosperity anymore. We are slaves to our cars now because growth with highways stopped being cost-effective in the last decades of the century. With construction jobs declining and the cost of living rising, Americans grow poorer. We can’t afford a large workforce building infrastructures indefinitely because the payoff isn’t there. That must be changed.
The economic transformations and expansions of 19th and 20th century America ended with the congested cities and suburbs we know today. The development process that made us wealthy is played out. We need a new growth strategy for the new century. Infrastructure jobs for working class Americans and, yes, a growing number of immigrants. Our sanity, pocketbooks and planet depend on it.
21st Century
The American Dream was rural in colonial America. Democratic capitalism changed the dream. With government taking debt for infrastructure development through bonds and taxes, wealth grew and grew and grew. Of necessity, America became urban. Big cities, New York foremost, built railroads and highways satisfying the changing economic needs of all Americans.
The infrastructures, cities, and wealth of the 21st century cannot be built any differently. Big cities and their suburbs are still the places where the needs are greatest. But these are not our grandparents’ cities and suburbs. The latest city is a vast metropolitan environment in need of a 6th great economic transformation. (See: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ECONOMIC PROGRESS)
Will the next great infrastructure of the America Dream be the urban-only minihighways proposed in Section 1? Will it be the updated subways operating as Transit Twins or maybe Triplets of Section 3? Will it be very high-speed intercity railplanes zooming along, as envisioned in Section 4?
We don’t really know how economic forces will play out. What we do know is that funding to repair existing infrastructure and funding to build new ones is in short supply. National, state, and city governments are running out of money. The national deficit is out of control. And neither raising taxes nor lowering taxes is the ultimate remedy. As in the past, the solution is smart government action getting private investors to build a better future for themselves and everybody else.
As it was with 19th century railroads and 20th century highways, new solutions are needed making transportation profitable again. As in the past, the new infrastructures must be economically viable and, better still, outright profitable. Hence not really tax driven. Growth must create a more convenient, cost-effective, and efficient built environment.
If America fails to build the right infrastructures for the cities and suburbs of the future, our economy will continue to weaken. The America Dream will suffer devastating setbacks. Worse than any we are experiencing today.
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THE VAULT: A View From 2100
The iconic infrastructure of the 21st Century is “the vault.” Some people call it “the big cage” for fun, but there is nothing claustrophobic about this great arched structure. Vaults are light and open in the spirit of the vaulted train terminals of the Industrial Age. But these vaults are not shelter. They are infrastructure spanning across some of the most congested highways of the year 2000.
But vaults were not built to sustain growth with these highways alone. Vaults are multiuse rights-of-ways built to develop the great cities and suburbs of the new century and beyond. Three different infrastructures share the space defined by vaults: highways, minihighways, and rail systems.
Picturing The Vault
The foundations are low concrete pylons 200 to 300 feet apart across the highway and 75 to 150 feet apart along its sides. Countless connected steel elements span between pylons creating wide open arches. The vault above the highway averages 125 feet high. The arching sides average 60 feet high.
The principal structural elements soaring between pylons are steel tubes. The tubes are arranged in triangular shapes of different sizes and proportion. There is little repetition. Just about every tube and connecting piece is different because the vault was designed to work its way around variations on the ground. This allowed its designers to retain the original highway with its messy topography. No habitable structures were affected either. Notwithstanding its vast size, the vault is a low-cost, low-impact infrastructure.
The footprint of the metro area served by the vault is 17% larger than it was in 2000. But the population now is 4.3 times greater. This vault is 68 miles long cutting through the Center, which has the highest population density and pedestrian lifestyles of the metro area. But three other Subcenters served directly by the vault experienced fast pedestrian growth. Two of these Subcenters evolved from three-story shopping centers built in the 1970s.
As they did before postmodern suburbs, kids walk to school and parents walk to shop. Most commuters use mass transit.
The growing population sustained by the vault created a more vertical city and suburbs. The cost of living dropped because the vault took urban growth in a new direction that was more cost-effective than other alternatives. Much of the population still drives but they do so less often, less distances, and with much more efficient vehicle choices.
The Highway
The oldest infrastructure in the vault is the highway at ground level, of course. The highway dates back to a six-lane highway built in the 1950s. The highway was widened several times reaching 14 lanes by 2000. The paved area is still the same but the highway has 16 lanes now because the lanes are a bit narrower. New safety technology made this possible.
In the year 2000, cars on this highway averaged 1.2 passengers per car. By 2100, passenger density more than doubled to 2.5. This enhanced performance was gradual and evolutionary. It went a long way making a quadrupled population possible. But this non-sprawl development wouldn’t have occurred without a new and very cost-effective minihighway system started in the 2010s. See next…
The Minihighway
The second infrastructure in the vault is a 2nd-generation 16-lane minihighway for minicommuters. The new vehicles made their definitive debut in the 2010s. Minicommuters are narrow one-person vehicles but today most have a seat in tandem for a second passenger. Unlike its original, the new minihighway is elevated above the highway. But there are no clumsy columns for support. It is suspended from the vault some 50 feet above the highway bed. This height was determined by existing highway overpasses, many transformed into intersections for minihighway ramps.
Before the vault was built, a smaller minihighway was carved out from one highway lane in each direction creating a doubled-decked 8-lane minihighway. But when the vault started operating, the original minihighway was removed allowing the highway bed to regain its original shape. Since the original two-level minihighway was built with modular components, the modules were removed quickly and reused elsewhere.
Unlike its original, the suspended minihighway is one-fourth the width of the highway. It doubled the vault’s lane capacity over time: half conventional lanes at grade and half minilanes above totaling 32 lanes. Unlike the original, the minihighway decks were generously spaced. They also included wider minilanes for higher speeds. But with minicommuter technology becoming safer, lane width was reduced again adding four minilanes overall.
The new lane and vehicle combinations made possible by minihighways did the previously impossible. The number of passengers using individual vehicles more than tripled: 2.5 per car and 1.3 per minicommuter. This enhanced performance went a long way making population growth viable.
This was achieved without adding a single inch to the width of the original highway right-of-way. This emerging structural efficiency allowed city, state, and national governments to cut taxes. Especially when space in the vault was presold as condominium to different investors, who own the minihighway and rail tracks above. See next…
Very High-Speed Rail
The third infrastructure in the vault is very high-speed tracks with railplanes. This infrastructure is suspended higher, much closer to the vault. Five tracks exist here: one at the center and two each on both sides down the arch.
The first two built were the outermost tracks. These two tracks handle intercity railplanes connecting this city with others cities up and down a growing corridor hundreds of miles long. Both tracks extend beyond the vault and into more conventional but still light elevated supports. Out there the rights-of-way are straighter with railplanes exceeding 300 MPH. Nobody flies commercial between these cities anymore.
Two other tracks were built two decades later. This is a secondary system serving points in between, also with railplanes. But 300 MPH is not practical here because the stations are closer together.
The fifth track at the top is a spare. It was the last built. Since rail transportation does not have the operational flexibility of roadways, which can be maintained without shutting down the system, this fifth track was planned from day one. It was completed as scheduled, four decades after the first two tracks opened for business. Just in time to begin long-term maintenance of the older tracks.
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE VAULT
THE VAULT IN THE YEAR 2060
32 LANES TOTAL: 16 highway lanes (blue) and two 8-lane minihighways (red). The new minihighways operated with 6 wider minilanes per level for two decades.
5 VERY HIGH-SPEED TRACKS: Center tracks are not normally used for the highest speeds
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THE BENEFITS of The Vault
Vaults are game-changing infrastructures not unlike early railroads and highways. Vaults are designed for fast growth with three evolving transportation components: minihighways for single passenger commuting, highways with a growing number of passengers per car, and intercity rail with express and local railplanes. The following are some of the benefits:
Strengthening the Economy
Lower Construction Costs
Unlike building more urban highway lanes and mass transit tracks, the space above highways is readily available. With cars and trucks excluded from minihighways, the cost of construction dives. The same occurs with railplanes, which are low impact. Building conventional train tracks and stations belowground or above city highways is much more expensive.
Higher Profit Potential
The number of car and SUV commuters switching to minicommuters grows quickly increasing suburban densities needed for pedestrian living and next-gen mass transit. This makes growth with minicommuters and railplanes more profitable to investors or taxpayers than building the same solutions of the 20th century: high-impact highways and belowground transit.
Economic Development
With America’s urban environments developing cost-effectively once more, America embarks on decades of enhanced growth and prosperity. The population of working class Americans required to sustain construction of new infrastructures grows indefinitely increasing our tax base. Cities and suburbs are transformed into superior built environments. With population growing and the middle class reenergized, bankrupt safety-net programs like Social Security and Medicare approach solvency again. Subsidies of all kinds disappear, lowering taxes.
Creating Better Megacities
Enhanced Viability of Metro Areas, Mass Transit, and Airports
With the most congested city highways increasing passenger count, population densities grow fast in the city and nearby suburbs. The growing population made possible by vaults makes new minihighways and rail service to airports viable doing away with the inefficient “hub-and-spokes” operations of multi-flight air travel. Congestion in large metro airports is now reversed without building new runways.
The sustainable megacities of the 21st century will have arrived, as they must: Delivered by a progression of well-managed market forces, not growing subsidies for more of the same.
Reduced Cost-of-Living In the More Developed Areas
The two largest expenses of today’s urban middle class are housing and transportation. Both costs drop significantly because non-sprawl housing (high-rise apartments replacing lower-density structures in many cases) becomes competitive again. Just like highway-dependent suburbs and higher density city neighborhoods did during the first decades of highways and modern transit respectively.
With cost-effective development in large metro areas transitioning to multi-infrastructure vaults, the cost-of-living drops. The middle class is strengthened and cities renewed.
Enhancing Global Economy and Environments
With America taking the lead advancing sustainable transportation with multi-infrastructure projects like vaults, other nations turn to America benefiting from our experience. Century-old mass transit and half century-old highways everywhere evolve to grow with American technologies leading the way. This benefits everyone including poor nations, which start restructuring for convenient, cost-effective, and efficient growth themselves.
Also, the enhanced economic viability of cities across the globe reduces pressure to emigrate. With job opportunities growing everywhere, sustenance living stops reversing habitat destruction and saving species. Use of fossil fuels drops reducing carbon emissions.
Enhancing Homeland Security and Defense
Smart growth policies building vaults are important fighting terror. With the population of pedestrian city dwellers growing faster and faster everywhere, car use per capita drops globally. This reduces oil consumption drying out the income of unfriendly and unstable oil-rich nations, forcing reform.
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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
(Coming soon.)
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