FLOATING AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS?

Add "locks and dams" to the list of "crumbling" (non-rail) infrastructure.

The [Mississippi] river's infrastructure is deteriorating faster than it's being replaced. When most of the locks and dams were built in the 1930s, engineers estimated their lifespan at 50 years.

Do the math. The lock and dam system so critical to American commerce is way past its expiration date.

Further, the amount [c.q.] of goods traveling on the Mississippi River is expected to increase by more than 20% by 2050.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has managed to maintain and repair the locks and dams, but the agency estimates its backlogged maintenance costs at more than $1 billion. Should any lock or dam fail long-term, it could create havoc for U.S. commerce.

Further, a new system would have longer locks — 1,200 feet, the size of a 15-barge tow — to prevent the kind of inefficiency caused by breaking barge tows in half to get them through.

This might be a prima facie case for privatization. Oh, wait, it's government work.

President Donald Trump's proposal for infrastructure funding released a few months ago was vague but hinted at private-public partnerships, meaning less federal oversight and the possibility of fees. The locks have always been free and shipping companies say they could go bankrupt if required to pay fees.

Rent-seekers will rent-seek, and every riverside owner of a pontoon party barge is going to want to keep the lock passages free, just in case, for instance, there's a nice fireworks display or riverfront festival or what have you on the other side of the locks.  Your breakfast cereal is probably cheaper, no doubt the sort of argument about the de minimus effect of funding public radio in your taxes generalizes to suggest that what you'd pay in extra taxes for the new locks you more than get back in cheaper food.  Alas, a full-on study of the incidence of transportation subsidies is probably too much work for too little academic payoff for a doctoral student, we're therefore stuck with whatever the lobbyists and their hired intellectuals will tell us.

There is, however, an opportunity to rethink the spending of the money.

Water is the cheapest and easiest way to move big, heavy objects. Consider the tug heading up to the Twin Cities with a dozen barges.

"If this 12-barge tow had three more barges, (a common load on the Upper Mississippi River), you would need 1,000 trucks on Highway 55 and I-90, or two 100-car trains, to carry the same load," said Patrick Moes, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers St. Paul District.

Those two trains, however, will be able to make two or three trips in the time it takes that tow to make one, even without having to break for the shortish locks.

The railroads have been downsizing for thirty or forty years, and the track capacity might not be there right now.  There's an opportunity, however, for Passenger Rail advocates to make common cause with the freight railroads that might be interested, in using some of the internal improvement money on rails, rather than on the locks.  Or perhaps, in place of tolls, the Army Corps could sell naming rights to the locks.  It works for stadiums, and now for potholes.