America's Infrastructure

Here's my take.

I appreciate your concern and I think it is very heartfelt.

However, I think the real issue is a bigger one. Making a case for spending $3.6 trillion when our national debt is nearly $20 trillion and out of control is not very prudent. It's like telling your wife that the kitchen needs a makeover when the foundation of the building is sinking.

Yes, it would be nice to have better roads, but we have an unchecked debt problem and a stagnant economy. Let me ask you some questions.

Where do you propose to pull the funds to do this?

What is the expected return on investment (how much and how fast)?

How will that impact the current economy (what are the numbers)?

How do you figure that the state of the current infrastructure creates a national security issue? You did not explain that. After WW II the interstate system was created for troop movement, but that has been pretty much obsoleted today. You might make a case that supplies from commercial enterprise to feed the military machine uses that infrastructure, but how is that suffering right now? Are supplies late due to infrastructure issues? Cite examples, if so. I am not aware of any.

The civil engineering jobs required for this will be a temporary one, rather than a sustained job. At some point the need for those workers will go away and we will be left with a flood of unemployed engineers. This is different than the commercial sector where the engineering job market tends to evolve over time.

Lastly, the picture you show to illustrate the unsafe nature of the infrastructure appears to be a picture from the San Francisco earth quake some time ago (or some earth quake). The cause of the mayhem for that event had little to do with failing infrastructure as it was a natural event.

You would do better to select a photo that represents the problem honestly. I am not saying you were trying to be dishonest, rather your choice of photos can be construed such that it takes away from your point (you have created your own straw man). People will be picking apart the photo rather than addressing your argument.

Anyway, I understand your point in the post, but I think it leaves a lot of unaddressed items in the argument. Problems like these are much more complicated than they might seem on the surface.

The photo is labeled as the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis. http://www.dot.state.mn.us/i35wbridge/collapse.html

Thanks for the correction.

Anonymous Hero,

You do make valid arguments about us being $20 trillion in debt and spending $3.6 trillion more makes little sense. By creating infrastructure jobs that will kick start a stagnant economy. In response to your kitchen makeover, our infrastructure is our foundation when it comes to society. In response to your questions:

Keep in mind what I said earlier that this is going to take hard choices and sacrifices on everyone's part. We can pay for this in a few ways, we can either raise taxes, i.e. the gas tax, creating a separate tax for this project alone, spending cuts on current programs, spending cuts on our defense budget. Ideally I'd love to see a lot of gov't fat trimmed on excessive gov't waste and have that put to better use.

On our return on investment, I can't give you an honest answer, I'm not a civil engineer and I don't know how fast these projects take to finish. An example I can think of would be the drought in California and how it's ruining agriculture and changing how people live. If you upgrade their water infrastructure and develop better water management, the return on investment will be huge. This is just one example.

These projects will be an improvement in our current economy by creating jobs not just for engineers but in the construction business alone. By putting more construction workers to work, more jobs are created which gives more money for people to spend, and then trickles down to other areas of the economy. Since there will be more jobs, that means more taxes will be collected which in term helps out in reducing our $20 trillion in debt. Keep in mind that's if our corrupt and inept politicians don't squander it.

As for our infrastructure becoming a national security problem I apologize for not including examples which was my bad. Our grid system (utilities) is due for major upgrading and is stressed to it's breaking limit. What if hackers get into our grid system which is all computerized these days and install a virus or finds a way to shut down the system and keeps it down for a considerable amount of time. Our society is so electricity dependent, can you imagine the chaos that would create throughout the country. The same goes for what if terrorist infiltrate our country and plan out coordinated attacks on a few key power utility stations and take the grid down, the same situation would happen as the before mentioned example.

Our dams are in bad shape and in a lot of places I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to set off explosives and destroy these dams and if they're located in heavily populated areas, there you go, mass casualties from a massive flash flood. Just use the Johnstown flood of 1889 as an example of the kind of death and destruction something like that can cause.

As for the picture I used, the photo is labeled as the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis.

I hope this addressed a lot of your questions in my argument. I agree when it comes to problems of this scale nothing is easy to fix and will come with a lot of complications. It would be better to act now rather than later when major problems arise which could have been avoided if we were proactive instead of reactive.

Joey: creating infrastructure jobs will only " kick" start an economy, if, all you want to do is sell a product to your self.

In other words, take a dollar out of your left pocket, and put that dollar in your right pocket.

Isn't that the nature of an economy? Money needs to pass from one person to another. If it doesn't, the economy doesn't exist. The pocket simplification doesn't do it justice.

The problem with the analogy is that the government doesn't have any money of its own. It only has what it takes. In the process, since it is a government expenditure, the value received for cost paid is much less. The government doesn't do anything well, except for maybe executing war, as long as they let the troops do the management.

The bottom line is that while infrastructure is important, it is not the huge elephant in the room with a bad case of flatulence.

That elephant is and has been the national debt bubble, which represents a more catastrophic effect by one or more orders of magnitude.

D+ is not necessarily very good, but it's a little misleading because so many different things get lumped into infrastructure that the really important elements don't get the attention they deserve and the unimportant ones get too much. Instead, it's we got to fix everything and $3.6 T is, as is always the case, much lower than what the real number will turn out to be.

Back to the debt that no one cares about. Even the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan group in Washington, (Keith Hall) recently warned that our debt has left us with dire consequences that could lead to economic collapse. The budget is unsustainable.

If the US economy goes, so will the rest of the world. Frankly we have a government that is spending out of control for their own votes. Proposing to add another 20% to our current debt is insane under the current economic situation.

Unfortunately, there is little improvement in sight. Our government's spending and management of the economy has left us with a more or less predicted permanent GDP growth rate of about 1.8%. At that rate it will take decades just to get labor participation rates back to where they were before 2008, but we won't last that long at the current rate of spending.

Finally, shovel ready jobs will not fix the economy. People are just wrong on that argument. We may see an initial bump, but it's not sustainable as it does not directly produce GDP. It is a facilitator and not a direct producer of GDP. The GDP is the real paycheck of this country.

CBO Director Keith Hall also stated that government investments only yield about 50% of the return on investment that the private sector does. The government mantra that they can fix this by pouring (borrowing) money on the problem is simply wrong and designed to foster votes, not economic improvement.

I guess what your saying do nothing? The band aid approach our country been in since 90's isn't working. If you want better and safer roads, bridges, improved power grid, gas lines, water lines, stormwater systems, sewage lines, etc your going to have to pay for them either by paying the government through increased taxes or to the private utility companies. The longer we wait the worse they become and the more we're going to pay. Pay me now or pay me later, because unless the US wants to be a third world country it's going to have to pay sometime.

I am saying put the majority of effort into the problems that are most dire.

If a person is wheeled into the ER with bleeding hemorrhoids and cardiac arrest treating the hemorrhoid first makes little sense.

It's like that flight that crashed (CFIT) into the mountain years ago where both pilot and copilot were too distracted trying to fix a lamp on the console to see the ground.

Is hemmoroids synomous with politician?

Feels the same to me.

The problem is there is not enough to even fix the most critically damage infrastructure right now because we decided not to keep up with the maintenance all along. It's like saying you didn't want to take your heart medicine because you don't want to spend the money for the medicine, but when you are on life support your willing to spend 10 times as much. Pay me now or pay me later. Doesn't matter to me either way I get paid, I just get to charge you more for the critical care you're now demanding and desperately needing.

How true.

We have politicians in office when we desperately need statesmen.

Spot on bakerjohn and lyn, I couldn't agree more.

By deferring repairs and replacement into the future, it will cost even more. Much more, because there's inflation, and then there is cost increases in labor, union benefits, fuel, equipment, supplies, materials, and the list goes on and on and on..

If the ASCE is giving a D+ to the condition of the roads, then as private citizen who must drive on those same roads designed by members of the ASCE, then I would like to give them a grade F , for their mish mash knuckleheaded road and highway design cattywhompuses.

Captain moosie: Sorry, I retract my comment.

Thanks for setting me straight.

You're welcome. No damage done really.

A vast majority of the population have no clue whatsoever and aren't informed about this nation's critical infrastructure disrepair. Nor do must really care. Everyone's life is busy busy busy, or they have their noses buried in their cell phone texting away. I call them SHEEPLE. THEY NEED TO WAKE THE HELL UP! If it's out of sight it's out of mind, until something breaks, then they all want it fixed yesterday post-haste.

Even though I'm not an Electrical Engineer, I worry a whole bunch about the current state of our Electric Grid and it's susceptibility to an EMP attack or a Mass Corona Ejection (Solar Flare) event. We only need slightly over $1Billion to harden the system against such events, but our do-nothing Congress has done squat about appropriating the funds ever since the EMP Commission Reports in 2004 and 2006. If the Grid goes down expect nearly 90% of the U.S. Population to die off within the first 2 years for various reasons, including starvation, massive civil disorder, murder, rioting, and exposure to the elements. Anything that is not EMP-shielded will cease to function, including tractor trailer rigs and trains which supply us with the basic necessities. Our society is not prepared to revert nearly back to Colonial times. We're too heavily technology dependent. When you have to rely on food supplies being shipped hundreds of miles to reach your local supermarket, then you have a very big problem in the supply train. Our local farms have been and are quickly disappearing, and what little that do remain cannot provide the required foods in their geographic area.Most people have roughly 2 days worth of food supplies in their fridges and cupboards, and that will quickly disappear by consumption or outright theft. Food stuffs on the supermarket shelves will also quickly disappear too, in a matter of a few hours after people discover that the SHTF, literally.

This is not Conspiracy Theory at all. It's very real,and a direct threat to our nation's survival as a Constitutional Republic. We've known the effects of EMP events ever since the "Starfish Prime" Thermonuclear weapon test in the South Pacific in the early 1960's ('63?). The Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, and the Iranians, all of whom have nuclear weapons or are developing them, know it too and also know that the Grid is our weakest link. What is truly scary is that both the Russians and Chinese have hardened their grids, yet we haven't.

The Grid is our soft underbelly and our greatest National Defense weakest link.

Unfortunately, when something fails the powers-that-be apply the quick Band-Aid approach. But that doesn't solve the long standing deep-rooted problems.

Obviously, you wouldn't go to the Emergency Room to obtain medical services for a deep cut requiring multiple stitches, only to leave with Band-Aids applied to a profusely bleeding wound. Same difference with infrastructure.

And infrastructure disrepair greatly effects the economy. When it's robust and functioning well, it enhances the economy. It's true in a converse manner too. this is discussed in great length is the ASCE Annual Report Card, and it has been submitted to the appropriate Congressional Committees and Subcommittees year-after-year, but the much needed funding never appears in sufficient amounts. We need $Trillions in funding to fix everything, but the last time that approach was applied it was an abject failure of waste, overbearing bureaucratic bungling, and Corporate Cronyism at it's finest. Remember those "Shovel Ready Jobs"? It never happened, nor did it boost the U.S. economy sufficiently. Brahahahhahahhaaa! It never really materialized......an epic waste of money. All it did was line the pockets of the politically well-connected.

I thought I would add a few more comments.

First I would like to say I admire the writing style of captain moosie, anonymous hero and Lyn, their writing is very eloquent and chockful of useful and thought provoking information.

I had not thought about emp and its effect on the logistic industry in quite that manner, although I wonder if it would be possible to shield the emc on every big rig and train if the pulse was powerful enough to knock out the grid. I do know the folks in nj and ny like a lot of marinara sauce though, I remember one month where I ran back and forth from hunts point to tri valley growers. I would p/u glass bottles out of Brooklyn, run them over to Modesto, then back to east coast DC's, I figure the first thing that would disappear from the shelves would be spaghetti sauce.

I think there are plenty of engineers available to rebuild the infrastructure, what's needed is a program to get all of the able bodied citizens and undocumented workers who ( not every one ) are sitting around drinking beer and smoking pot on the federal dole to actually work for their welfare " pay " . The government wouldn't need to call it something fancy like the WPA, the govt could call it the " Work and Eat Program, simply, no work, no eat. Think that sounds Draconian ? Ask the average Joe what he thinks when he is making the 50 mile commute to his part time job and he sees all of these good for nothing hobos bumming spare change in the parking lot of the piggly wiggly.

The pocket simplification: I remember when swamp cooler pumps used to be actually made by Dayton in Dayton Ohio. Now the stickers say their made by Dial manufacturing in phoenix, az. Actually Dial is just another DC receiving 90% Chinese made stuff, getting intermodal cans running back and forth from LBC. Who's making money in this equation ? The trucker is getting his 35 cents a mile, the warehouse worker is getting his $11.00 dollar an hour, the bulk of the cost is spent on terminal operators, long shoremen union pay trans oceanic shippers and Chinese state run cooperatives.

As for the 8000 sq ft of lawn that needs watering, if Lyn could run a water pipe 140 miles to the Colorado, why couldn't the the government build an aqueduct to run some of that excess brazos river water over to thirsty folks in California's central valley ?

Thank you for the compliment Tony.

I don't know if it would be feasible to effectively shield trucks and locomotives from an EMP event. The same holds true for transport ships. The only simple method that I know of is to full encompass electrical devices in a seamless steel box called a Faraday Cage.....top, bottom and all around.

Earlier vehicles (I believe pre-1996, but I may be off on that date) that do not have computer chips used to govern/modulate modern-day engines and it's emission controls will undoubtedly still function. Remember those caps, rotors, and points? Everything relying on chips will fry from an EMP, and ends up as a large paper weight.

Here's a link to the Committee's 3 reports, about 60.6 MB total (in PDF format). Read them and you'll get very concerned. Most Americans are obvious to this threat.

http://www.empcommission.org/reports.php

You mean " oblivious", right ? And is he the same guy who created that" law" ?

Yes, you are correct on both accounts. I should have proof read much better. Sorry about that!

Agree Cap.

From what I've seen on contractors side is that the fuel tax's aren't enough to cover the cost of building the infrastructure. Example PA fuel tax is around 6%. It hasn't increased since 1996. It cost $15 a ton for asphalt in 96 it's now around $98. Labor average salary was $7/hr now $16/hr. Then you have equipment, cost of fuel, etc. A contractor working on a road project is looking at between 2.5% to 6% profit.

The company I work for has been short listed for the largest road construction project in AZ. It's going for around $3 billion and we'll take 3 years once completed we have maintenance of the project for 30 yrs. We are expecting only a 2% profit from it before we start the maintenance period. Because of this project no new road work will be proposed for the next 5 years. So what happens to all the failing bridges and roads. You better have good shocks and expect to drive miles out of you way in detours.

Not sure we're their getting there isn't enough work out there. I've been busy for the past 18 years and I don't see it slowing down, except the shortage of funding, or the country stops running.

But, but, but Obama said he was going to fix our infrastructure with shovel ready jobs when he ran the first time! He certainly wasn't lying to us, was he?????

Can you bring an evidence that he stated all the infrastructure was going to be fixed? If you actually worked in the field and unstood the policy you would know it was a program to help reduce unemployment in the construction field and to get states going on small projects that had all the designs and planning were completed. It was an attempt at a time our construction field was going stagnet to help give relief and possibly jump start an industry which is the foundation our country's economy is built off of.

"Shovel Ready Jobs" up Emperor Barry's skinny arse!

A lot of the funds were wasted by the Federal bureaucracy (FHWA), the individual state DOTs bureaucracies, and a fair share gobbled up with large ongoing projects. A vast majority of the Federal funds went to highway projects and little else.

Very little new construction jobs were created. Everyone had their fingers in the pie, except John Q Public little guy just wanted to work to support his family and his local bartender.

Since when did Big GobMint ever solve a problem or do it cheaper than the private sector? Never!

Kept us busy in PA for three years. Then when I moved to AZ the main jobs over there were all state run shovel ready. Maybe it just affected ACOE projects but most states had a bunch of small to medium bridge and overlay projects ready to go to keep alot of companies going and people working. The materials company I worked for thanks to the program did not have to shut down in fact it was the first time we all received a small bonus since 2004. Thanks to this program in fact when I was recruited to go to AZ in 2011 I was able to double my salary from rates I was making in Philly. Companies still hiring, people making a good living, buying house, going on vacations, buying products, etc., and the roads and other infrastructures being repaired I see nothing wrong with the program while it lasted.

joeymac,

No one here will argue that America's infrastructure is cracked, if not broken.
The problem is that everyone still has electricity and water.
Just a few people are killed each year from bridge collapses. Band aids are common everywhere on bridges and dams and roads.

There's no glory in building infrastructure. No money flowing in from lobbyists and big businesses to politicians who control the votes.

NASA is renting rides from commercial rocket builders because politicians can't figure out how to pass constructive legislation while feeding at the money trough to finance thier next election.

We learned nothing from the housing boom and resulting financial collapse except new ways to circumvent campaign and finance laws.

Lawyers got richer, bankers got richer, the Bain Capitals of the world are thriving while the top ten percent of the US population have 81% to 94% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and almost 80% of non-home real estate.

The Supreme Court has declared that elections can be sold to the highest bidder, who no longer even has to be a human being.

So sadly, the 90% of the population that uses American infrastructure has no power to get it rebuilt.

I have to go turn the AC down another few degrees. Its 110°F outside. I'll water the 8,000 square feet of lawn we have after sundown. We have plenty of water here in the Arizona desert. What's the problem????????

If you take the waste out of the Federal GovMint and the individual states, then you'll have plenty of money to spend on Infrastructure rehabilitation.

Call it lost money found.

If pigs could fly........................................................

I only wish. One can dream, eh?

I weep for our future.

Politicians only care about what they're paid to care about.

They still get automatic pay raises, and House office budgets are at $1.5 million, Senate is at $4.5 million per office per year. You can do the math.

That's appalling and that isn't all they squander.

I can't remember how many billion was spent on the last election cycle.

How about Killery Klinton's State Dept. loosing over a $1BILLION? They still can't account for it. There's GovMint working hard for the US Taxpayer, eh?

Then there's the over $2TRILLION that disappeared within the DOD.....***EPIC THERMONUCLEAR POOF!!!!!*** Lots of Black Projects now have a funding infusion no doubt. How the "F" do you loose $1T?????????

I fully suspect that the $1B ended up in a State Dept./CIA "Black Project" to supply arms to those so-called "Syrian Rebels" via Libya, following the Benghazi Terrorist attack on 9-11-2012. Those arms fell into the hands of ISIS.....Well, ain't that special.

In the meantime, none of these fiascos are being reported in-depth by the U.S. LameStream Media (LSM)....

My sincere apologies going off on a political rant, but as a Taxpayer this sort of chit really "Burns my Rice Krispies"!

It was $6 Billion.

Even before Clinton's state lost theirs, the Pentagon somehow lost $6.6 billion sent to Iraq for post-invasion "reconstruction."

Then there was the $.5 bil in oil they lost.

It happens all the time. Clinton is just the latest loser. And she and Obama are more reviled than any of their predecessors who deserve it just an much.

How much did the desert wars cost us in TRILLIONS of dollars and also many lives?

There's plenty of blame to go around.

We in India have "BOLT" scheme which is joint venture between Govt. and private infrastructure organisation. Which means Built, Operate, Lease and Transfer. Infrastructure is built, operated, leased and transfered to Govt. This is sort of joint effort between Govt. and private sector. Govt. alone can not afford to finance such massive project.

In America, that BOLT plan ('scheme' sounds like something underhanded, and is way to close to the truth for most corporate or government 'plans') would end up as follows:

B - Build using Government funds, in the form of 'Corporate Tax Credits,' shifting the cost to the taxpayers, while siphoning a little off the top to give to the shareholders or use to buy more politicians.

O - Operate in a near-monopoly situation, charging the taxpayers over market price, while demanding more Corporate tax Credits to 'offset operating costs,' again, funneling more to Shareholders and the 'buy more politicians' slush fund.

L - Lease to the government under a contract that would have the government pay off the initial construction costs (which they already paid, since they funded the construction in the first place) over the term of the lease, with the corporation owning the infrastructure still claiming a majority of the profits.

T - Transfer ownership to the government, then stay on as 'Operating Consultants' to run the facility, charging the government a fee only slightly more than the previous lease agreement.

The problem is that we have WAY too many politicians in the pocket of the corporations, and thanks to the ruling on Citizens United, they're not even pretending to play fair, almost bragging about spending the equivalent of a state's annual GDP to but their favorite puppet in office.

We all are paying price for democracy. It is same everywhere in the world. Politicians, rich businessman are milking the public funds and spending hugely on the elections to remain in the power. Poor common man pays the price for all this loot.

Democracy is not the problem!

The problem is apathy!

As Socrates said, the penalty for not becoming involved in politics is to be ruled by your inferiors.

Smart chap, that Socrates, whatever happened to him?

Oh yeah, he spoke out against the "might makes right⁽¹⁾" attitudes of Athenian Democracy (Majority Rules, Minority shuts up and takes it, or, as some have put it, "Two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for lunch."), and the Powers That Be decided that he needed to be put on trial for 'rabble rousing⁽²⁾.' Since one of his former students was one of the Thirty Tyrants⁽³⁾ who tried to impose an oligarghy over Athens, the jury decided to convict and sentence to death.

Notes:

1. Or 'One Dollar, One Vote' to use the modern Citizens United ruling as an example.⁽⁵⁾
2. Another way of saying 'getting the minority angry/excited/unapethetic.'⁽⁴⁾⁽⁵⁾
3. That's like claiming MLK's message is worthless because he spoke with Malcolm X on several occasions.⁽⁵⁾
4. Even then, they could make it a crime to simply be 'walking while a minority.'⁽⁵⁾
5. It is WAY too easy to take the Trial of Socrates and see it mirrored in modern society. Have we really progressed so little in all these years? Or have we been regressing?
   

Drinking water D? -- I would bet that 98% of the people in this great nation can simply turn on a faucet to get safe, high-quality drinking water.

Hazardous waste D? -- Regulations for handling, storage and disposal of hazardous wastes are strict and heavily enforced. The EPA has done a good job of reducing this serious problem, but in my humble opinion, it has become big & powerful enough.

Wastewater D -- I'm sure many municipal wastewater treatment plants could use some upgrading, but a D? Polluted rivers and lakes are (thankfully) a thing of the past.

Aviation D? -- Air-traffic control has the most sophisticated modern instrumentation and high-level training possible. Runways are in great shape. Air travel is about as safe as it can be, considering the huge number of flights. Where's the D grade here?

Roads D? -- I drove at least 600,000 miles in the past 15 years, mostly in and around Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo. Aside from a few chuck holes every spring, the roads were fine.

Schools... I guess I can't argue with a D for the quality of education offered in most inner-city public schools these days, but the quality of the buildings isn't that bad any more. In Cleveland, most of the old school buildings have been replaced with modern facilities. I suspect this is the case in most regions.

Energy D? -- Unless there's a big storm with trees down all over town, I get high-quality, reliable power every single time I flip on a light switch. If we lose power due to a major storm, it's nearly always back on within a few hours. Maybe I'm too easily impressed by this level of reliability... but a D?

I suspect there will be plenty who disagree with my comments. That's fine. Compare our standard of living (and infrastructure) with at least 80% of the world.

I also had same doubts about American infrastructure. There seems to be some mistake.I do not think conditions are so bad. May be this report is to get more sanctions from the Govt.

What a lot of people don't understand is that critical infrastructure is hidden out of sight, therefore everyone thinks it's condition is okay and doesn't warrant repairs or replacement.

You may drive over an Interstate bridge and think it's in very good or even close to perfect condition, so no worries. Honestly, you're only seeing the road surface and barriers, which are maintained regularly by the state DOT crews. But if you go under the bridge and take a close look at the underside, you may quickly discover a number of deficiencies, some of which can be huge. I'm not saying this applies to all bridges.

You may discover severely eroded reinforced concrete bridge piers and abutments, with large stress cracks and/or spalled concrete cover with exposed rebar. this condition is bad JuJu in terms of that load-carrying capacity of the element is severely diminished. It could also fail catastrophically without warning.

You may also discover failed steel roller bearings, rocker bearings, and expansion joints. You may also discover severely deteriorated underside of the concrete slab, with exposed corroded rebar and highly spalled concrete.

You may also find severely corroded steel girder webs, were there's practically no web left, and in all places in the most critical part of the girder: at the end of the girder at the bearing locations or at an intermediate support rocker bearing. These locations are critical because they transfer the bridge self weight and the highway loads directly into the supporting substructure and then the foundations. Without them the bridge could catastrophically fail.

If you are looking at an older steel truss bridge, which was designed and constructed in the 1950's and into the early 1970's, and discover that the steel gusset plates are severely corroded due to road salt or pigeon droppings, or they were accidentally undersized during the design phase of the project. The bridge collapse on I-35 in Minneapolis MN in 2012 is a case in point. That bridge featured twin main trusses which offered not structural redundancy like modern bridges with multiple bridge girders. It also had severely undersized steel gusset plates where the steel members connected to one another in the truss top and bottom chords. There still quite a few of these steel truss bridge left along the Interstate system. Then we have locally owned municipal bridges of the same type that are very old (well beyond their design life) and not well maintained and severely structurally deficient.

A bulk of the bridges constructed along the Federal Interstate system were built in the 1950's, 1960's, and early-to-mid 1970's. That makes even the youngest bridges over 40 years old. The oldest ones are approaching 60 years in age. The normal design life of the Interstate bridge is typically 40-to-50 years in age.

That's just the bridges, and i could go on and one about them alone.

then, as another case in point is the nearly 60-year old Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River, that was constructed in the early 1950's for the New York State Thruway Authority. Construction of the new bridge is currently underway....they're driving steel piles into the river bed now. It's major flaws are that originally wooden piles were driven to support the bridge pier and hence the bridge itself. It was determined that many of the piles are severely rotten. At the time of it's design, cost reduction was a significant theme. and no one then ever envisioned that the bridge would be in service for as long as it has been. Another defective design feature is the twin truss design in both northbound and southbound lanes. Again, no structural redundancy like the I-35 bridge in MN. The new bridge will cost over $4.5Billion and that number keeps changing almost daily. By the time it's finished, expect massive cost overruns.

When I was a City Engineer for a small city in Upstate New York, most of our water distribution system was built before 1908, and consisted primarily of Cast Iron Pipe which is pretty brittle and can be overstressed fairly easily (due to a combination fluctuating internal water pressures, trench loading, and vehicular live loading), as compared to modern day Ductile Iron Pipe (DIP). CIP water mains are highly susceptible to frost ground penetration and heave during the winter months. Many municipalities throughout the Northeast and Rust Belt in this country feature this type of pipe. They are also are susceptible to leakage at the lead & oakum joints, loosing tremendous amounts of treated water into the soil mass. That adds up to the overall operating expenditures of filtering and treating raw water only to have it leak and disappear into the ground. As most often then not, when you have a water main leak or break you also get undermined streets and roads. that's another massive cost that must be addressed during repairs.

Then you have leaking or non-operational water main appurtenances such as valves and fire hydrants that require rebuilding and replacement. You won't believe how firefighters are hard on both. Usually turning a hydrant foot valve either hard or in the wrong direction in haste to knock-down a fire. Snap goes the rising stem! During my first year as the City Engineer we had over 60 hydrants out of commission. Our Water Department rebuilt a majority of them at great expense (a new Clow Eddy hydrant then cost us roughly $1,500 apiece through Bidding, with the added expense of special order for the special nozzle threads....only 2 municipalities in New York State used these nozzle threads: The City of Utica and our city). We bought 17 new hydrants that year alone.

Also during my first year as the City Engineer, during a severe cold snap we experienced a massive water main break on a 14-inch line during the deep of the night. We were losing water at a rate of 4.5 MGD until the Water Dept. was able to isolate the break about 12-hours later in the oldest mill section in the city. We almost drained both water storage tanks dry due to the break, which would have shut-down the entire city. It took over 6 weeks, with lots of Overtime involved, to finally physically locate the break. We were deterred by very deep frost penetration under the streets that reached down 8.5 feet below grade. It also didn't help that the City's water main record drawing for this old area were incredibly incomplete....we had to use 6 separate sets of blueprints to work off of.

This is just a small inkling, by a few examples, of what this country is up against. I hope this enlightens some people who weren't in the know how bad things really are.

Capt. Couldn't agree more. It's so frustrating to try and explain this to just family and friends. My father did get until I took him on several project sites and showed him what was really out there compared to what he thought.

Thanks Bakerjohn. You're absolutely SPOT ON there!

I often run into the very same thing, even with my own wife, let alone any other lay person including my mom and my siblings. Even, my brother who is a Chemical Engineer doesn't really get it!!! Go figure!!!! It's like knocking your head against a brick wall trying to explain it all to them. I do think much of it is just apathy and going with the flow and believing whatever the GovMint says is Gospel.....Sheeple.

I showed my dad one time the underside of a bridge he used to drive back and forth every day to work, that was until I showed him the underside. The bridge was 250 feet over a river and a half mile long two lane steel bridge. The metal structure that held the roadway was rusted so bad they could not weld any more steel to it. It was being held together with plywood and asphalt. From then on my dad had me sit down with him go over his route and figure out the safest way to get to work around that bridge. It took the state three more years to get the funding to replace the bridge. Sadly it took someone "more important then us" to almost fall through to get it done.

Woke him up in a hell of a hurry, eh?!

Yep. Only problem after that is he wanted the report of all the bridges and roads he drove on. As a outside sales person you could imagine the can of worms that was.

All you can really go on was providing him with a list of the state DOT Bridge Ratings by BIN. Then explain what the ratings actually mean.

Having worked in PA I have an inside tract on inspectors and inspections. Same thing here in AZ. Kind of help keep track of things and we're possible new jobs will come up.

Good style Mon...

Have to keep the economy running.