I was just writing a letter to Rep. Lincoln Davis about transportation allocations. The two choices seem to be Obama's plan to leave spending at $20,000,000,000.00 for now, or Rep. Oberstar's (D., MN) plan to up it to $500,000,000,000.00 right away.

Now I like roads, but in thinking about this issue it seemed to me that there are a lot of other infrastructure things that rural America might need improved first.

I don't say that lightly. The road by my house is a dirt road, which is off another dirt road. Directions to my other cabin include "take the dirt road, then turn off onto the smaller dirt road, then drive across the unbridged stream and follow the rutted path up the slope through the woods." It is safe to say that at least for the last 30 years, not a cent of the billions of public transportation money spent each year has found itself on the roads to my property. Yet somehow we get by.

Yes, I know this is simplistic and that public monies have funded the Interstates, state highways, and county roads that lead to these little dirt roads, and yes, those are important. But please hear me out. My point is that even though we could certainly use some road improvements out here, there are still things we need more.

So, what is it that we rural dwellers really need?

One kind of infrastructure we need right now in rural America is universal high-speed broadband. Yes, real broadband (100MB/sec+ is already getting old in some parts of the world; 1GB/sec+ would be better).

In the twenty years I have lived in rural Tennessee, our level of Internet service has gone down, not up. We used to have dual ISDN, world-class residential service as good as any at the time. Now we are back to ancient dial-up.

ISDN no longer works, and the monopolies AT&T and Comcast cherry-pick the addresses, leaving out the people in the rural areas.

People like me and many of us here used to be competitive even though we lived out of town. Now our Internet service, even the expensive so-called "high-speed" satellite, is laughably, tragically slow. People on dial-up and satellite are automatically excluded from many remote-worker jobs ((link...)), and rightfully so.

We are treading through knee-deep mud, and often paying more for the privilege, while others in the race are zooming by.

In addition, we could use some of the following:

• home medical visitation programs for the homebound
• local homeless shelters
• passenger trains
• buses (there used to be 2 bus companies serving Rockwood, now none)
• battered women's shelters
• six-inch or higher water mains so we can have hydrants. Add in some hydrants to match.
• local non-polluting renewable energy
• online or tiny ultralocal schools for K-12, so they won't have to waste time and carbon-footprints going to huge consolidated far-off schools
• cellphone and wireless Internet service or at least affordable satphones. Cell phones still don't work out where I live.
• Meals on Wheels--last I looked it is only for age 65+ with a 2-year waiting list.

Even a sick, 64-year-old disabled veteran couldn't get a meal or a physician out here.

I am sure the above list is by no means complete. Ideas, anyone?

-- OneTahiti, in favor of infrastructure--for everyone.