ASCE Report - America's Infrastructure
 

American Society of Civil Engineers
2009 Report Card for America's Infrastructure

Highlights

Grades:

Aviation............................D
Bridges.............................C
Dams...............................D
Drinking Water...................D-
Energy ............................D+
Hazardous Waste................D
Inland Waterways...............D-
Levees.............................D-
Public Parks & Recreation.....C-
Rail.................................C-
Roads..............................D-
School..............................D
Solid Waste.......................C+
Transit.............................D
Wastewater ......................D-


Estimated investment needed over the next five years: $2.2 trillion

http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2009/index.html

Wow thats pretty bad, i think. Id need to see comparison with other countries.

It is remarkably similar to our financial institutions.

Build build build, but no maintainance. Everyopne wants a new road, bridge or overpass, but we don't replaice the water mains until they burst.

"It isn't in the budget!"

Nothing is in the budget until it breaks.

Actually, not much has even been built in the last 30 years.

Seems The USA built the majority of our existing large-scale projects (constructed pre-1965) in the wake of our country's previous (successful) involvement in international wars overseas.

Perhaps that was due to a military mentality which was adept at foreseeing needed infrastructural improvements in tandem with a workforce which had been through military training and had been instilled with a "follow the leader" / "complete the mission" psyche. Add to that a populace which was brought up on and used to manual labor.

Is the citizenry of the USA now incapable of planning for its own future?

Not as long as we have enough Mexicans, Slavs and Chinese to do the heavy work!

http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...s/rolleyes.png

It seems to me that what's been going on for about the last 30 years is a debate about the size of government, rather than the role of government.

Government hasn't been too big or too small. it's been AWOL.

Much of our present infrastructure was built after the collapse in 1929. To some extent, WWII stagnated the economy. Railroad modernization was put off during a time when the priority was moving war materiel, and contributed to the demise of passenger service during the 1950s. Millions were removed from the workforce. The government was the primary consumer. War bonds were sold primarily to ease inflationary pressure by taking money out of circulation, not to finance the war.

The post WWII boom existed at a time when much of the world's economy was shattered; about 55% of global industrial capacity was in the US.

A good case study is the Recession of 1948-1949. The psychological component that doubted the solidity of post-war expansion was that "depression was just around the corner." Predictions of massive unemployment as the country shifted from war-production, although ultimately groundless, were persistent.

It was the Great Depression, not WWII, that shaped both personal and national economic attitudes during the 1950s and the 1960s, when most of the huge war-debt was wiped out.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...0px-USDebt.png

C+ for Solid Waste, woo-hoo!

No sh!t, really? http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/wink.png

Big Dig Nation!

In the late '80s and early '90s, the Big Dig was seen as Tip O'Neill's gift to his home state, a giant infusion of federal cash in the midst of a deep recession. Everyone wanted their piece: the unions, looking for thousands of high-paid jobs with lots of overtime; the environmentalists, demanding acres of parks and millions in "mitigation;" the politically-connected neighborhoods of Southie, Eastie and the North End, demanding perks and discounts.

And, of course, the architects, engineers, contractors and the project manager, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, all of whom had lobbyists. They all knew how to bid low and use change orders to ratchet up the price.

They all knew how to push the politicians' buttons. Don't think about the cost, they said. Think about the jobs, the economic boost, the greenway reconnecting downtown Boston to the harbor, the smooth flow of traffic, the many ways the Big Dig could make Boston a "world class" city.

...At the start, the feds were paying 90 percent of the Big Dig's costs, estimated to be a modest $2.35 billion in 1983. According to the Globe's figures, Massachusetts will end up paying 73 percent of the final $22 billion cost... we'll be paying for it until 2038.

...Big Dig [debt service] is draining highway repair money from every other needed project, as it has for more than a decade. Almost 80 percent of state highway workers are being paid with borrowed money, the Globe reports. When you factor in the interest, that means an $18-an-hour worker is costing the state $28.80 an hour.

Rick Holmes: 'The ride ain't free' I'd be less skeptical of our prospects for truly improving our infrastructure if it was driven by planners and responsible public servants with a realistic understanding of the perils of public debt. But I'm afraid we're more likely to have hysterical politicians feverishly lobbying for a chunk of 'free federal money' with all the attendant hangers-on riding their coattails.


That said, I can't think of a better project, (aside from Tappan Zee upgrade 4A), than the Boston to Montreal High-Speed Rail corridor. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/cool.png

Direct rail services between Boston and Montreal using the proposed route operated for approximately 110 years until the early 1960’s. In the first half of the 20th Century, the Boston-Montreal services along this route ran using steam locomotives with two or three round trips per day, with one way trip times in the range of 10 to 12 hours. By 1961, a diesel propulsion service along this route was offered with one round trip per day making fewer stops, with a one-way trip time of 8 hours and 30 minutes.

...the BMHSR Corridor is 329.4 miles

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...onik/BMHSR.jpg

Highest Speed Express Service could potentially make the trip in 4 hours 30 minutes with four intermediate stops accounting for an hour of that, have a max speed of 110 mph with no restrictions for existing horizontal curves (meaning substantial trackage and crossing improvements).

...there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done...- BHO

The figure of $2.2 trillion only includes what is needed to get our nation's existing infrastructure back to a state of good repair. The latest estimates for the economic stimulus package have the infrastructure component at about $90 billion so we're a long way off from fixing the overall problem, which continues to get worse each year.

Within our area, I know that the local chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (the ASCE Met Section) has started the preparation of similar types of report cards for Long Island and New York State. One objective is to draw more public attention to the current condition of infrastructure in the New York City area and the need to increase funding for maintenance and upgrades.