America's Crumbling Infrastructure

[Purveyor]

WASHINGTON (CNN) —Nearly 40 million Americans will kick off one of the busiest travel seasons in history this Memorial Day weekend, jarred by potholes on America's roads, crossing her aging bridges, riding her antiquated railways and taking off from airports that draw international scorn.

Long a source of national pride, America's infrastructure is in critical need of repair, but federal government spending on the issue has gone down 9% in the past decade. As former Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood says, "We're like a third-world country when it comes to infrastructure."

CNN aviation and regulation correspondent Rene Marsh investigates the state of the country's bridges, railways, airports and pipelines in a four-part series: America's Crumbling Infrastructure. Check back here from now through Monday.

Part 1: Bridges supported by crumbling 90-year-old beams

Nearly 60,000 bridges across the country are in desperate need of repair. One example is just down the street from the White House and Capitol Hill. In the nation's capital, 68,000 vehicles cross the Arlington Memorial Bridge between Washington and Virginia every day. CNN was granted rare access to go inside the crumbling bridge.

"It's just eroding and concrete is falling off," said National Park Service spokeswoman Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles as she showed how the original support beams from 1932 are corroding. The beams have never been replaced, and the bridge could be closed to vehicle traffic within five years if it isn't fixed. It'll cost $250 million.

MORE...

http://www.wptz.com/politics/americas-crumbling-infrastructure/39724498

[onethatcares]

1. according to the study it's like everything else

in sunny America but nothing solves the long term funding process.

Probably because no company wants to pay its' fair share of taxes to use that infrastructure.

It's the capitalism way, only the shareholders returns on investment are to be honored.

Gaud, I gotta get outa here. some way, some how.

[Moostache]

2. Corporate externalization at its finest...

Corporate taxes that are dodged, forgiven, rescinded or simply not collected from the Cayman Islands or their ilk are a source of revenue that should be mandated and collected OFF THE TOP - BEFORE DEDUCTIONS OR WRITE-DOWNS, WRITE-OFFS or accounting tricks that show how GE loses money every year...raising the gasoline taxes, to simultaneously encourage conservation but also to apply use taxes to those who utilize the bridges and highways the most, would also be a good start.

Just one more reason that our obscene military budget is a fucking waste...by choosing to spend more than 50% of our total budget on military invasions, wars, care of the wounded and garrisoning of the planet, we simply state to the world "don't fucking bother with an invasion of mainland USA...your freaking tanks will bog down like you rolled them into a rice paddy".

No developed country in the world would want to take control of our infrastructure disaster. None.

But for the idiot mouth-breather crowds at a Trump rally, is this all because "Obama's weak and Trump will make it happen because reasons..."

[Baobab]

4. Corporate army- to protect the supply chains.

Thats where the investments are being made, overseas.

Automation will bring the factories back but without jobs.

[Baobab]

3. Disinvestment is a global trend.

Rent Extraction also.