Sustainable Infrastructure Investment

Eric Christian Bruun has been visiting professor at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, and adjunct faculty at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He has taught short courses at several universities around the world. He has managed or participated in numerous national and international consulting projects. He is the author of Better Public Transit Systems: Analyzing Investments and Performance (2nd edition, 2013), and co-author of An Introduction to Sustainable Transportation: Policy, Planning and Implementation (2010), both from Routledge/Earthscan. Eric has Bachelor and Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering degrees from the University of Washington and a PhD in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

"This is a very important book. It analyses a wide breadth of problems – concerning transportation, education, health care and others – across the whole policy spectrum. It does so in three different countries (the US, the UK and Finland) with three very different systems of political economy and governance. 'Systems' is a key word here because the systematic inter-relations of cause and effect with regard to policies, is necessary to understand why, what often seem on the surface to be wise practices, so frequently fail. The answer as to why such occurs is both simple and complex. The simple answer is that purported policy solutions to problems when considered in isolation usually produce unintended consequences. Of course, there is a more complex answer as well, and Dr. Bruun provides it . . . in case after case. His cogent arguments and sound logic are matched by a wealth of empirical fact . . . as said before, embracing problems and issues across three very different political-economic systems. This is a very important book!" Garry Potter, Professor of Sociology, Wilfred Laurier University Waterloo, Ontario, Canada"It suggests hope for a better future, and in fact I see the book as being well sprinkled with constructive ideas on how we can do better in the future." Glen Weisbrod

• 1. Introduction 2. Common but incomplete explanations for slow investment and repair 3. Reporting quality 4. Politicians are supposed to have a vision 5. Thomas Frank’s analysis or how we got the Dual Economy 6. Dual Economy and the Public Work Sector 7. Dual Economy and Institutions Competing with Public Works 8.SuggestionsIndex