REPAIR / cleaning up the US infrastructure.
America’s publicly owned infrastructure is falling apart. One in nine bridges in the United States is “structurally deficient.” There are 240,000 water main breaks each year. Thirty-two percent of America’s roads are in “poor or mediocre condition.” Amtrak’s Acela (which I am riding right now) is on time only 65.2 percent of the time, and runs at a top speed well below that achieved by fast trains overseas. Then there are the failings of airports like New York’s LaGuardia, which Vice President Joe Biden rightly likened last month to “some third-world country.” To add insult to injury, our long, harsh winter has only added to the long list of infrastructure repairs needed across the United States. So it’s not surprising that the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the United States a D+ on its latest report card for America’s infrastructure.
The consequence of a fraying infrastructure is a less productive economy, which means fewer jobs and less wealth, and the hassle of taking longer to do less. It also slowly erodes the wellsprings of U.S. influence abroad. National power isn’t independent of the domestic economy; it rests on a vibrant economy. And the weakness of America’s infrastructure opens up the possibility of events that could dramatically change life as we know it. By some accounts, the destruction of as few as nine power substations could cause the entire U.S. electric power grid to collapse—and to stay down for months.
Repairing America’s infrastructure will cost billions. And as anyone who owns a house knows, putting the fix off only means a steeper final bill.
http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2014/03/24/how-do-we-pay-to-repair-americas-decaying-infrastructure/
