What's Wrong With This Photo?

Happy Friday folks -

We're off to a wonderful 3-day weekend!

Today's note has nothing to do with markets.

Well it kinda does.

Everything is connected.

I snapped this image a few weeks back.

It’s a bird’s eye view above the Hanging Lake Tunnel along I-70, just outside Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

So tell me - what's wrong with this photo?

Here's what I see.

The highway system holds a greater footprint than the Colorado River.

It’s a system that enforced its will upon our natural environment. 

Maybe I'm crazy. But this seems ass backwards.

I'm grateful to work remote. To pull myself off the mercy of this system.

But I got out. Most folks don’t.

I'm half joking when I talk about flying cars.

But we laughed instead of doing the math.

Our current system is broken.

There's always construction. The road is at risk of closure due to fires in the canyon. And the financial costs continue to rise.

How much? 

A normal mile of rural interstate runs about $7M / mile.

Push it through mountains and the number climbs fast.

Glenwood Canyon checks in at $490M for 12.5 miles.

That's roughly $39M / mile. In today's dollars, closer to $60 million. (s/o inflation)

We paid more than 5x the going rate to bully a highway through a slot in the rock.

And we keep paying.

Commerce loses $1M / hour every time it closes. $116M to repair after a single fire.

This isn't infrastructure.

It's stranded capital. Nature is trying to repossess its landscape. And my money is on Mother Earth.

Now we can't just burn the system down.

But what if we allocated 10% of our transportation expenditures to innovative, aerial-based transportation infrastructure?

Here's why that math works.

A road bills you for every foot between Point A and Point B.

An aerial route bills you for two landing pads. The airspace in between is open. And it doesn't wash out in a storm.

You pay for nodes - not miles.

Autonomous systems are safer.

Flying is faster.

And we alleviate the need to scar the land with concrete, pavement, and asphalt.

This isn't science fiction. It's an engineering and capital allocation issue.

Horses ↣ Bicycles ↣ Ships ↣ Automobiles ↣ Airplanes ↣ Rockets

Every leap required someone to refuse to accept the status quo.

Now, I’m not like Hunter S Thompson saying let’s rip out the roads and pave the streets with grass. 

I just want us to ask the question if the current way of doing things is the most efficient means at our disposal. 

We deserve better than this.

Godspeed.