MSNBC has a nice interactive map connecting to lists of Deficient and Obsolete bridges by state and county. To get to the list of counties, click on your state, then click on the link in the little box that pops up with summary stats for that state. To go directly to the MA list of counties, click here.
Finally, the entire nation has found a singular commonality: decrepit infrastructure!
Please share widely!
I can’t believe we’re in the hall of shame …
How can you not believe? Let’s go down the list of governors in the past 16 years and think about what their choices would be:
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William Floyd Weld (1991-1997)
(a) Fix the bridges
(b) Cut taxes and let the next guy worry about the bridges
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Argeo Paul Cellucci (1997-2001)
(a) Fix the bridges
(b) Cut taxes and let the next guy worry about the bridges
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Jane Maria Swift (2001-2003)
(a) Fix the bridges
(b) Cut taxes and let the next guy worry about the bridges
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Willard Mitt Romney (2003-2007)
(a) Fix the bridges
(b) Cut taxes and let the next guy worry about the bridges
I don’t think we can hold our overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature blameless.
When my rep (Harriet Stanely) spoke up about the Big Dig expenditure sucking the life out of repairs outside of Boston Finneran immediately kicked her off all committees. The bad legislature does not excuse the governors or the federal government. Like most neglect- there is proably plenty of blame to go around. My favorite culprit is the Big Dig.
voting to reduce the tax rate to 5% with the promise that we can cut taxes without cutting services.
Two bridges near my house that have been reported to by on their last legs.
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The Bates Bridge connecting Groveland to Haverhill has been given the Last Rites for about 10 years but with little action except for patching. The bridge connecting West Newbury Mass to Merrimac looks pretty shaky.
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The Comeau Bridge connecting Haverhill proper to Bradford has been down for active replacement for a couple years. It is being replace but has been significantly delayed.
I’ve added the direct link to the list of MA counties. Here it is too. Scary stuff, huh?
I’d appreciate some perspective on this report so I can sleep at night. There must be an engineer or three in the house.
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As a layman, the description of “functionally obselete” doesn’t make it sound so bad… I mean, Ted Stevens and Betamax could qualify under this definition, right? But then again, it is pretty horrifying to read that something as familiar (and massive) as the Tobin Bridge “cannot safely accommodate current traffic volumes.” How did we get here?
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And maybe I need to sober up before I keep writing, but shouldn’t each bridge have its own little reserve fund? If my condo association can do it to save up for something as mundane as a fresh paint job every few years, I fail to understand why money hasn’t been set aside for the maintenance of critical highway infrastructure which people depend upon for their livelihood–and lives.
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It’s not so bad. That it was built using no-longer state of the art isn’t a problem at all. The concern is that it was engineered to accommodate x vehicles of y size per day, and instead it’s being used by x vehicles of y size, where x > x and y > y. Can it handle those larger values? Probably.
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We got “here” by encouraging a society where everyone over 16 owns a car and uses it often, through subsidizing oil, building convenient roads to the rural areas, zoning residential away from commercial, and not investing in public transportation infrastructure sufficiently. In WWII, the ridership of mass transit was approximately 2.5 times what it is now, and that’s raw numbers not per capita. [source: APTA]. So, we’ve got far more cars on the road per person, more miles driven per car, and more people. The baby boomers are retiring; their parents public works projects are beginning to retire too.
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Not really, for two reasons [1 fair, 1 unfair]. The fair reason: when the taxpayers pay for the bridge in 1950, why should the taxpayers of 1950 pay for the usage for the next 50 years, when many of the taxpayers in 1950 won’t be using the bridge 50 years later. The unfair reason: at the federal level, Congress and the President merely float debt to enjoy benefits now and not worry about the costs [yes, the GOP has done this to a far greater extent than the Dems in the past 50 years: Bush, Bush, Reagan, even Nixon]. States can’t do this: they have to have so-called balanced budgets. So instead of running a financial debt, they run these hidden debts. Creating little funds to pay for maintenance at the time of construction means less money to pay for stuff that people want now by God, and those are the voters, and they’re going to get that bacon now.
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Instead of pre-funding infrastructure maintenance, why not just demand that it get properly funded each year? This way, the people using the stuff now are paying for their fair share now.
The fair reason: when the taxpayers pay for the bridge in 1950, why should the taxpayers of 1950 pay for the usage for the next 50 years, when many of the taxpayers in 1950 won’t be using the bridge 50 years later.
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There is a capital budget, wherein projects are to be capitalized (bonded) and paid for over the next 50 or so years by the people who make use of them. (That is what is done not only with roads, but with school buildings, too.) Then there is the annualized budget, which includes the debt service on the bonds that support the capital budget, but also the maintenance on the capital projects that were paid for by the bonds. The electorate loves the bonding, but they don’t care so much about paying for the maintenance. I don’t have an issue regarding the bonding for the capital projects, but I do have an issue with the fact that nobody wants to pay for the maintenance of those very capital projects.
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Actually I do have an issue with the total and complete mismanagement of the Big Dig. But that’s an orthogonal discussion.
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The sad fact is that the US federal government does not have separate budgets for capital projects and for annualized expenses. I put it this way: the US federal budget is a fraud.