Approaching Targets
Dead Level, Plus Energy, Drainage System to Address Sea Level Rise: If We Build Barriers to Keep Sea Water Out, What Do We Do with All of the Land Side Water? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Bruce Grulke
Leonardo da Vinci developed many unique technology and one of them was the lock system for Milan's NAVIGLI. Similar to the Venous Valves in our veins, he designed the locks so that the pressure of the water would provide the energy to firmly shut the gates. Small spillways on either side of the gates allowed the water to drain passively until equilibrium was established between lock sections. While there is a sincere effort to rebuild the NAVIGLI large portions of the system now run above subway tunnels and across major transportation corridors, substituting ribbon turbines for the sluices provides energy from the water draining to the lower section that can be used to raise water up to the preceding section. That increases the speed of the locks and doesn't require changes in elevation. This study explores how this concept was extended to address the problem of removing rainwater trapped on the land side of the flood barriers while it produces electricity for the communities along the way which is critical after a severe weather event.
Featured Crowding-In Through Intergovernmental Transfers: The Case of Federal Investment in Public Transit
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Arseniy Braslavskiy
Addressing environmental and energy security challenges faced by the United States, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 (BIL) greatly increased federal funding for transportation. Yet, the efficiency of such investments is uncertain. Previous literature has found both crowding-out of other types of funding and the opposite "flypaper effect''. I contribute to this debate by analysing federal investment in public transit, which is a substantial part of BIL. Using a spike in federal transit funds due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), I estimate their effect on local investment decisions. Since most of the monies was allocated using a pre-existing formula and local characteristics, my exogeneity assumption is transparent and consistent with multiple robustness tests. I find a particularly strong "flypaper effect’’: each additional $1 of ARRA grants increased total transit expenditures on capital by $10 in the following ten years. In the first five years, the differential expenditures are majorly driven by the increased application for other discretionary federal programs. In the following five years, expenditures from state programs have the biggest effect. This suggests that additional federal funds lead to large expansionary efforts by local authorities that persist long after the initial funds are spent.
