Independent UK: Crumbling America has a $2.2 trillion repair bill

[marmar]

Rupert Cornwell: Crumbling America has a $2.2 trillion repair bill
Out of America: The US needs to update its roads, railways and airports – but recession and a shift to the right have put big infrastructure projects in jeopardy.

Sunday, 17 October 2010


First, a tale of two rail tunnels. One of them is in Switzerland – the 35-mile Gotthard Base tunnel, the cutting of which was completed on Friday amid great national rejoicing, and which, when it opens for business in 2017, will be the longest of its kind in the world. It will have cost $10bn (£6.2bn), representing $1,300 of taxpayer's money for every citizen in the land of William Tell. But it will bestow huge benefits not only on Switzerland, but on north-south freight and passenger traffic for all Europe.

The other rail tunnel is (or rather was) in New Jersey, and would have linked the Garden State to Manhattan, vastly improving clogged access to New York City, with long-term economic benefits to match. The project, 20 years in the planning, would have cost around $9bn, or roughly $1,000 for each inhabitant of one of the richest states in the US.

Alas, it is not to be. A few days ago, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey announced his state was pulling out, in effect dooming the tunnel even though digging has started and $500m has already been spent. The cost was simply too high, he declared; in these cash-strapped times, New Jersey had better things to spend its money on. And so you start to understand the silent crisis that is undermining America: the creeping decay of its public infrastructure.

It's happening everywhere, from potholed interstate highways and grimy railways, to congested airports and a creaking air traffic control system that only adds to the increasingly third world experience of flying in the US. And hold your breath when you cross an American bridge: a 2005 study found that fully a quarter of them were structurally inadequate or obsolete. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-crumbling-america-has-a-22-trillion-repair-bill-2108955.html

[xchrom]

1. Do I remember that the infratructure bills actually

Much higher than that?

Still -- it's a stunning sign of the times.

[marmar]

2. Yeah.....I don't know where the Independent got that estimate.....

...... but it seems to me I heard a figure much higher than that one.

[Fool Count]

3. All that infrastructure was built when America was the world-leading industrial

power and it served its great and ever-expanding industrial economy. Now simply there is no need for it.
Expanding or even maintaining this infrastructure would cost more than any possible benefits it could bring
to the modern US post-industrial service-dominated so-called economy. Thus increased infrastructure spending
would make no economic sense without a concrete plan to revive the internal industrial production. One could
argue that decaying infrastructure is one of the obstacles for such a revival, and he would be right, of course.
But improving infrastructure alone would not do the trick and would be just wasteful without addressing other
causes of accelerating de-industrialization of America.

[OutNow]

4. Oh yeah, better things to spend our money on - like foreign wars

This is fairly basic - isn't it. You can spend your tax money on infrastructure, education, health care, etc. OR you can spend you money on a war budget bigger than all the other countries combined.

Take your pick.

PS. The story that you can have the best of both is, well, a story.

[Xicano]

5. K&R