Moore’s law accurately predicts that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (computer chip) will double every two years with minimal increase in cost. This is why you can get a much better flatscreen TV today for much less money than 20 years ago. The problem is that infrastructure has been following Eroom’s law (that’s Moore’s spelled backwards); a term that stemmed from the observation that drug discovery gets slower and more expensive over time.
By way of example, the NYC first subway was constructed in 1904; the 9.1 mile initial segment cost $35 million. That’s about $3.8 million per mile, or about $118 million inflation-adjusted to 2020. Second Avenue Subway Phase 1 was completed in 2020 at a cost of $2.5 billion per mile. That’s a 2000% increase in cost, after adjusting for inflation.
Abundant and reliable water, electricity, and transportation underpin every aspect of our economy, and serve as an antidote for the fiscal unsustainability problems faced by federal, state, and local governments and households. Therefore, we must go back to first principles and reconsider the blueprints for our electric, water, and transportation systems, such that the capital cost of these systems is radically reduced while simultaneously increasing the performance of these systems.
In Industry 4.0 we must take advantage of all available resources, including the tech innovators that proved Moore’s Law through persistent physical, chemical, and digital innovation over the last several decades. However, our nation’s infrastructure owners and tech innovators have largely avoided collaboration, helping to keep Eroom’s law on track.
Generally speaking, infrastructure owners are wary that new tech innovators might:
- Go out of business (instant obsolescence of their tech)
- Use infrastructure data for an unscrupulous purpose
- Fail to perform, killing a project schedule and budget
Tech innovators have avoided pursuing infrastructure contracts because of an unfavorable procurement approach:
- Prescriptive scopes impede innovation
- Awards are prioritized for incumbent firms (barrier to entry)
- Time and materials pricing drives low profit margins
The only way out is with policy and master planning.
Our political leaders must take deliberate steps to align outsized incentives to outcomes, while simultaneously mitigating the perceived risks of collaboration with tech innovators. Inspiration can be drawn from several examples including the NASA COTS program (yielded the commercial space travel market), Operation Warp Speed (yielded mRNA vaccines), and the ARPA-E program (yielded macro-energy innovations).
Our urban and rural master plans, must recontemplate how Civil Infrastructure 2.0 benefits from co-location with certain land uses, and how zoning can be recontemplated to control synergistic development (inclusive of more deliberate subterranean zoning). Such masterplanning must blend the skills of traditional planners, and engineers on the frontier of defining Civil Infrastructure 2.0.
There is much work to be done, and build-out will take generations; creating whole new classes of jobs and trades. The job for today is stakeholder alignment and proof-of-concept.