Shoddy U.S. roads and bridges take a toll on the economy

[jakeXT]

...

"It was a wreck," said the 48-year-old electrician, although he reckoned he got off easy compared with a motorcyclist whom Gomes saw thrown into the air after hitting a crater on another downtown street. "A damn minefield," he said of traversing many of Providence's roads.

Rhode Island has an unusually large share of shoddy highways, streets and bridges, but it's not much better in the rest of the country.

..

Consumers shell out billions of dollars for extra car repairs every year. Insufficient and poorly maintained roads mean costly bottlenecks for businesses, which discourage expansion and hobble American companies competing in the global economy.

Congestion on major urban highways costs the economy more than $100 billion a year in fuel and lost work time, estimates the American Society of Civil Engineers.


http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-roads-economy-20140815-story.html

[hollysmom]

1. About 30 years ago I rode over a bridge in Connecticutt

If felt so wrong, I pulled into a cash toll booth to talk to the toll taker even though I used to always have exact change (before EZ pass and so long ago that they still had toll roads in Conn. ).
I told the toll taker that I felt my life at risk on that bridge that something was very wrong with it, I felt like it was ready to collapse,. She said Oh, everyone says that, the road is fine, I argued with her even thought it was late and I had several hours to drive yet. I begged her to tell her manager and she finally agreed, and then she asked me to move on, I said I was waiting for her to call. ha ha . Needless to say that bridge collapsed 2 days later, I am not prescient, you could feel the bridge bounce wrong. they never inspected the bridge, they never fixed it. It was a findable flaw. They ignored all the people who felt so strongly they reported it.

I expect to start hearing about more bridge collapses, that particular one was because of stupidity (built with a stupid design of 2 pins to hold the entire bridge together - 2 teeny tiny pins, one broke and then the other. the newer failures will be because of neglect. And the law suits will begin.

[unhappycamper]

2. Minnesota's I-35 bridge collapse was a harbinger of things to come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge

[brutus cassius]

3. Here's a great idea....

When I think of how shoddy this country's roads, highways & bridges are (& I'm a bridge painter, I see the condition that a lot of the bridges are in here on the east coast on a daily basis.. pretty scary, really), & I think of the nightmarish traffic jams that occur daily in practically all of the metropolitan areas of this country, I think to myself... We ought to take the people who are in charge of resource allocation & maintenance of all this, and put them in charge of the nation's healthcare system as well!
Now that's a great idea.