The Guardian ran a series of articles looking at the state of high-speed rail travel today. France intends to double its length of track over the next decade, and China is planning a massive rail-building programme, including a high-speed line which will halve the travel time between Beijing and Shanghai to 4 hours. In Germany, domestic air travel is rapidly going extinct, and Spain's network has made day trips between Madrid and Barcelona a possibility. The USA, which has long neglected its rail network, is planning up to 10 high-speed lines. Meanwhile, Britain's only high-speed line goes to France, but there is talk of a 250mph line from London to Birmingham and beyond, possibly by the early 2020s. Meanwhile, the CEO of France's rail operator, SNCF, weighs in on what the UK should do.
posted by acb on Aug 7, 2009 - 49 comments

Data Center Overload. "Data centers are increasingly becoming the nerve centers of business and society, creating a growing need to produce the most computing power per square foot at the lowest possible cost in energy and resources."
posted by homunculus on Jun 15, 2009 - 32 comments

The globe’s networked ecologies of food, water, energy, and waste have established new infrastructures and forms of urbanism. While these ecologies exist at the service of our contemporary lifestyles, they have typically remained hidden from view and from the public conscience. Infranet Lab is studying the shifting / changing conditions. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Apr 20, 2009 - 2 comments

According to an article posted in today's Wall Street Journal, the electricity grid in the U.S. has been compromised by foreign spies, leaving it vulnerable to disruption. Last year, the CIA acknowledged that the system had been compromised and that the goal had been extortion. In response, the Federal Electric Regulatory Commission issued new cybersecurity specs for the power grid, to which companies such as GE have begun responding. But could it be that the new security efforts are motivated by government officials who stand to gain by this attempt at drastically increasing government control over the Internet? [more inside]
posted by Roach on Apr 8, 2009 - 29 comments

Great achievements in American socialism: A slide show of two dozen excellent things the federal government bought with your money.
posted by homunculus on Feb 6, 2009 - 98 comments

Infrastructurist. Although the blog is only a few days old, they've already debunked some of the myths of 24, interviewed Michael Dukakis, and grappled with Amtrak economics.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Feb 5, 2009 - 27 comments

Andy Grove on Our Electric Future - "Energy independence [viz.] is the wrong goal. Here is a plan Americans can stick to." Perhaps some infrastructure spending^1,2 is in order? [etc., &c., cf.] [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Jul 15, 2008 - 14 comments

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush. "The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup." [Via Firedoglake.]
posted by homunculus on Nov 18, 2007 - 70 comments

John Stilgoe is a professor at Harvard who teaches his students how to, among other things, mindfully observe the urban and suburban environments they inhabit. [more inside]
posted by jquinby on Oct 11, 2007 - 27 comments

"California has a decision to make. We either brace ourselves for long-term [water] cuts that threaten our economy and our very way of way of life, or we invest in a solution to fix the [San Francisco Bay] Delta and expand our water toolbox so we can meet future challenges head-on.” [more inside]
posted by salvia on Sep 16, 2007 - 41 comments

Three Generations of “America to the Rescue.”
posted by homunculus on Aug 23, 2007 - 39 comments

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) published their latest Infrastructure Report Card in 2005. America's infrastructure got a D. The ASCE estimate that it will cost $1.6 trillion over a five-year period to bring the nation's infrastructure to good condition. They also have a Critical Infrastructure blog. [Via Gristmill.]
posted by homunculus on Aug 3, 2007 - 49 comments

Roads To Riches (or We've Got a Bridge in Brooklyn to Sell You--Seriously) -- Why investors are clamoring to take over America's highways, bridges, and airports—and why the public should be nervous.--...a slew of Wall Street firms—Goldman, Morgan Stanley, the Carlyle Group, Citigroup, and many others—is piling into infrastructure ... Assets sold now could change hands many times over the next 50 years, with each new buyer feeling increasing pressure to make the deal work financially. It's hardly a stretch to imagine service suffering in such a scenario; already, the record in the U.S. has been spotty. ...
posted by amberglow on Apr 29, 2007 - 107 comments

"[Vitek] Boden had waged a three-month war against the Scada (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system of Maroochy Water Services in Australia beginning in January 2000, which saw millions of gallons of sewage spill into waterways, hotel grounds and canals around the Sunshine Coast suburb." A 2002 Washington Post story on possible al-Qaeda attacks also mentions the Boden case: "Specialists in cyber-terrorism have studied Boden's case because it is the only one known in which someone used a digital control system deliberately to cause harm."
posted by russilwvong on Feb 16, 2006 - 3 comments

Polar Inertia is an online photojournal devoted to exploring and documenting contemporary nomadism, urban architectural typology, and the oft-hid-in-plain-sight infrastructure of contemporary existence.
posted by Chrischris on Jun 14, 2005 - 6 comments

Anyone smell a conspiracy? London and the South East gets hit by a massive power cut in a similar way to New York and the surrounding areas. Complaints from authorities in both cities of "under-investment in the National Grid " and talk of "antiquated infrastructure" strangely mirror each other and it's odd that these two extremely rare events have happened so close together. Was this a deliberate test of our emergency infrastructures, terrorism or just plain coincidence?
posted by andyHollister on Aug 29, 2003 - 31 comments

Halliburton out of the running for the $600 billion contract to rebuild Iraqs infrastructure. Andrew Natsios, director of the USAID, which is handing out most of the postwar contracts, is keen to counter any allegations of favoritism or political influence. "If I got a phone call from anybody putting any political pressure on me, I would report it immediately". Halliburton is the company formerly run by Dick Cheney, VP of the United States.
posted by stbalbach on Mar 28, 2003 - 19 comments

There's a lot of news coverage this morning about Afghanistan going live with their official country domain ".af" - the first two advertised sites are here (?) and here (via the BBC). There's a less publicized, and much better site here via google. I guess you know you've made it as a civilization these days when the glass is lit. I remember how excited I was when the ADSL synchronized and my pop up adventure began. . . I hope this isn't our farewell present to this country, though.
posted by jdaura on Mar 10, 2003 - 11 comments

Iraq - Its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation (pdf) is Downing Street's recently released intelligence dossier regarding Iraq, mentioned during Colin Powell's UN speech. Fair enough maybe, but they copied it pretty much wholesale from here (authored by a postgraduate student from California), without even as much as a thank you. More info here (channel4.com) and here (bbc.co.uk).
posted by toby\flat2 on Feb 6, 2003 - 17 comments

Is state government finally doing something right? Who knows? this seems legit enough. Apparently, if you register you can get cyber security alerts delivered to your mailbox. Can I register if I'm from say, Nebraska? Furthermore, how real is the threat to Florida's cyber infrastructure anyways?
posted by Captain Supermarket on Nov 21, 2002 - 11 comments

E-mail Reaches the Unreachable via Shortwave in the Solomons
PFNet is an innovative development project which deploys a growing network infrastructure across the largely rural and remote communities of the Solomon Islands. "PFnet is based on a model where community-managed, operator-assisted email facilities provide all groups (even illiterates) the means to send messages and Internet emails. ... Owing to the formidable logistical barriers in this scattered island nation, the mainstay of the network uses HF/Wavemail; a well proven system short-wave radios in Pactor 2 mode." The organization is a finalist for the Stockholm Challenge, an award for innovation in IT development.
    All a community needs is a shortwave radio, solar panels, and a computer running Wavemail to send email, and potentially more. The results are quite impressive: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
posted by rschram on Jul 3, 2002 - 5 comments

"No national railway of a developed country has ever run a profit. They're not supposed to. The correlative economic and social benefits they throw off -- bringing commuters to taxpaying corporations daily, for one thing -- more than offset any net loss they suffer." [via camworld]

You don't run your home's central heating, air conditioning or plumbing at a profit, so why should a country try to run its infrastructure that way, be it rail, health service, water, ...? Is it forced on us because nationalised services always seem to become fantastically inefficient and bureaucratic?
posted by southisup on Jun 26, 2002 - 63 comments

Next move - nationalizing the internet infrastructure in Europe ? 300 staff and union officials have blockaded themselves at the network operations centre in Belgium following Dutch telecoms company KPNQwest bankruptcy filing. Stocked up on provisions, taking shifts unpaid to keep the centre fully operational. "If we leave, then in three to five days there will be the largest internet slowdown in European history." From the article - KPNQwest's infrastructure covers 60 cities around Europe, estimated between one third and one half of all European internet traffic.
posted by Voyageman on Jun 7, 2002 - 10 comments

Somalia's entire internet access and international phone service shut down by the United States.
posted by trioperative on Nov 23, 2001 - 10 comments

Want to know when the T3 will get set up in Chad, or how much access costs in Djibouti? Check out African Information Infrastructure. It's guaranteed to make you glad you don't live in the Third World and can connect at higher than 14.4.
posted by tdecius on Sep 8, 1999 - 0 comments