Specialism 4: Infrastructure Flashcards
What is the history of infrastructure?
Purposes of infrastructure used to be:
- communication
- military
- both
Infrastructure doesn’t stand alone, it’s part of a network (ex. military defence system during cold war: towers to check for airplanes)
Infrastructure could be used to develop an area, you make a structure (ex. Emmeloord: everything in biking distance)
1966: post-war strong believe in road infrastructure, cars, and highways. More connected is more economic growth.
What are the challenges in infrastructure?
- You are connecting, but also disconnecting (ex. railway or highway through neighbourhood)
- Infrastructure can be both visible and invisible (ex. no trees on pipeline so it’s accessible)
- Infrastructure is often very big
- Infrastructure can have different goals, aims and functions
- You also need money to maintain it
- It is there for a long time: what is the money worth after that time (interest rate)?
What are the functional components of a transport network?
- movement function: where distance beween point of origin and point of destination is covered (ex. road network)
- transfer function: connection occurs between movement modes in passenger transport (ex. at train station)
- transhipment function: connection occurs between various movement functions and/or between storage functions for goods transport (ex. at port terminal)
- storage function: where goods have a travel speed of zero (ex. in parking area)
What is the standard procedure of a procurement proces?
A private actors pays for it and the government later pays it back. They provide private capital and get a return on the investment.
Designs can depend on the market:
- if costly to maintain, some private actors make more money maintaining it
- some private actors what designs that are cheap to maintain
The Dutch government needs private capital for project. Often with no interest rate, because they trust the government
What are relevant actors in infrastructure?
- public-private partnerships
- banks: gives money if sure they get it back
- investors: spend money to make more money
- constructors
- municipalities
- water boards
- province
- designers
- engineers
- Rijkswaterstaat
- state
What is the institutional design for infrastructure?
2010: Tracéwet: expanding infrastructure
1927: Wegenbelastingwet: hidden tax to pay for roads and spill-over effects
1934: Motor Vehicle Tax Act: also opcenten by provinces, that can differ per province, most people don’t know they pay it
What is the procedure for expanding infrastructure?
Based on Tracéwet (2010)
- Initial decision: what do you want to do?
- Scoping: what is the idea behind the extension? should we use an alternative?
- Preferred option
- Draft route decision: where will it be build? what does it look like?
- Route decision: route proposal and EIA leads to 3 environmental options for the decision maker:
- what if you do nothing?
- most environmentally friendly option
- the route proposal
Why is the spatial structure of infrastructure relevant?
By the spatial structure you can recognise what city it is
- radial structure
- axial structure
- tangential structure
- grid structure
What are the approaches towards infrastructure?
- by the design of the road you can recognise the type of road (in built-up area or not, purpose, maximum speed, slow traffic, number of lanes, street parking)
- integration with other land-uses: more accessibility makes it a nicer place to live, results in new activities and land-uses
- traffic planning interventions
- ABC-policy (A: a lot of people go there and highly connected, B: connection between two types of transportation, C: only one type of transport)
- Transit Oriented Development (TOD): land-use is determined by infrastructure
What are the trends in infrastructure?
- trains: more sustainable (energy transition), less planes
- long term vision: shifts take a long time, that is difficult
- increase in travel time per minute per person (concentrate functions further away from where people live, specialisation in the labour market, housing market, leisure and travel for fun, labour participation of women)
- plan a city by how far you can go with a certain mode of transport
What types of PPP’s are there?
- B: build
- EB/DB: build and design
- DBM(F): build, design, maintain, and (finance)
- DBMO(F): build, design, maintain, operation, and (finance)
What is the role of governments in PPP’s?
Fully public sector: provider
Fully private sector: enabler
