A bundle of useful info from The Pocket Guide to Transportation – from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The last in this series reveals the gap between rhetoric and reality. How many times have you heard, in the States and Canada, that we have an infrastructure deficit measured in the trillions, depending on what and how you measure? Particularly bridges, whether crossing water or highways.
These charts suggest the number of structurally deficient bridges is actually going down. Indeed, the only line going up in a negative way is “functionally obsolete” in urban areas – that is, “a function of the geometrics of the bridge not meeting current design standards.” Likely another way of saying that it needs to be widened.
The Motordom boys need to have something to spend money on, and so infrastructure repair, in an age when its getting harder to justify road- and bridge-expansion (though they do that, too), is used as the rallying cry, even if not entirely justified.
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Nonetheless, the great American Interstate Freeway system (and Trans-Canada, too) was built essentially between the mid-1950s and early-1970s. And a half-century later, it’s all running down at the same time.
The chart implies that we are maintaining the roadways in reasonably good shape – and it will require billions more to continue doing so. More reason, then, why the first priority should be adequate system maintenance before expansion.
