About Dan McNichol

Dan McNichol is a number-one bestselling author and an award-winning journalist. His published books, articles, thought-leadership papers and speaking events focus on mega construction projects in the United States and The Peoples Republic of China. McNichol is a frequent voice on National Public Radio (NPR).

KPNR: America’s Interstates a National Achievment

Dan McNichol on the U.S. Interstate System

Excerpt from KPR:

“Dan McNichol is the author of “The Roads That Built America: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System,” (link is external) and he’ll be speaking tonight (THUR) at the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City about how this marvel of engineering and civil planning was […]

Boston’s High Line

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Placemaking: The Northern Avenue Bridge restored gives Bostonians and its visitors a place to play in the Atlantic Ocean. The bridge intersects: Innovation and Financial Districts, water and land transportation systems, The Greenway and The Harbor Walk public parks. 
Re-activating […]

Stalking A Dream

 

The Great Recession wiped out my work, my nest egg and my marriage. With a tad of hope and a ton desperation I turned to a friend. “Per Christiansen, pronounced like the fruit,” is how he introduced himself a dozen years earlier when I showed up at his garage with a project car in tow. […]

Holistic U.S. Infrastructure

Let’s look at the megillah – the whole picture – of America’s failing infrastructure: Critical US systems are silo-ed – especially by experts. Laymen depend on professionals to see infrastructure wholly: water, waste, transit, energy, aviation, rivers, sewage, road, brown-fields, parks, schools, levees…
I spent the past 3 years touring America’s vital systems in a beat […]

Double Duty Dude

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Jeremiah, a state employee for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, took his civil service to a higher level by securing Low & Slow crew members accesses to the Ohio River Bridge Project’s construction site after we were denied by a subcontractor on the project. His actions […]

S.O.S.

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Save Our Superstructure: willful neglect has condemned a vital link to our past – a path to our future. Everyday the barely standing Old Northern Avenue Bridge begs Bostonians to value its history. Today that challenge is unmet.

Concerns of a catastrophic failure forced the Department […]

The Road – Gone

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Deputy Fire Chief, Paul Davidovich:  a US Marine helicopter pilot, retires to the Rocky Mountain town of Lyons, Colorado and builds a log cabin for he and his wife Maureen. All is well until ten years later when a biblical flash flood rips through their remote village […]

The Interstate System

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The Interstate System is a proper noun branding a 47,000 mile system of 62 superhighways interconnected by 55,000 bridges and 104 tunnels. Crisscrossing into every corner of America the network is marked by numbered red, white and blue shields labeling a mega internet of the most trafficked desire lines – trade routes […]

The Hudson Whisperer

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Per is the Hudson Whisperer.

I was trucking though the mountains of Western Pennsylvania towards Massachusetts in a hastily rented U-haul rig. It was a crisp October morning in 2003. Yellow, orange and red leaves splashed the deep blue morning sky. I was high spirited […]