By Ellis Talton and Remington Tonar
Transportation infrastructure and the internet have a lot in common. Both are networks of pathways that ferry things from place to place. For transportation systems, those things are people and goods. For the internet, they're packets of data. Both have to handle multiple types of traffic across multiple mediums. For transportation, there are cars and roadways, planes and runways, trains and railways, boats and waterways. For the internet, there are bits of electromagnetic signals transmitted through fiber, cables and radio waves. Both are experiencing increasing rates of usage that threaten capacity. For transportation, much of that usage is due to growing freight demand from e-commerce. For the internet, it's largely due to growing video consumption. Most important, both serve a critical connective function and are vital to the social and economic welfare of the nation.