One thing that seems to get a bit neglected on these boards in infrastructure--the raw nuts-and-bolts of society, the things that get you where you want to go, that carry food from farm to city, that ensure that clean water is delivered to everyone in a metropolis. So I'm asking YOU, AH.comers, in the spirit of the "Alternate 80s/90s/60s Scenarios" threads, what are the best infrastructural PODs that you can think of? What changes in the way we travel, ship, power, or water do you think would have interesting consequences, political or social?
For me, I'll pick a few:
WI the US had a functional HSR system in the '80s?
WI the US's tram and rail transit systems hadn't been dismantled in the '50s and '60s to make way for buses and roads?
WI the Houston Ship Channel was never built?
No seriously, Houston is one of America's biggest ports! If the Ship Channel's never built, that could have some major repercussions--f.e., Beaumont could become Texas' largest city and the major Texan port as a lot of oil flows out of it.
WI the REA had never been passed and rural electrification had been a haphazard, state-sponsored process?
This might tremendously slow the growth of a national electrical grid (or rather, a wide-regional electric grid). Plus, it might later have important implications on the development of telephone, cable, and internet service networks to rural America, as a 1949 amendment to the Act extended the cheap loans provision for extending the grid from electric to telephone companies.