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If I remember things correctly about 45,000 bridges across the US are in poor condition and the original Infrastructure Bill targeted 10,000 of them. The Bill g
by athrun 5y ago
If I remember things correctly about 45,000 bridges across the US are in poor condition and the original Infrastructure Bill targeted 10,000 of them.
The Bill got watered down further.
There is simply too much infrastructure to maintain, and more and more stuff is being built every day with no realistic plan for long-term maintenance. It's a losing battle.
- spoonjim 5y agoStrong Towns makes the case that there is just too much infrastructure in the US and the level of sprawl that we are built at is economically unsustainable in the long run.
- dahfizz 5y agoExcept for a very generous interpretation of "the long run", I don't buy this. We pay more than enough money in taxes to maintain our infrastructure. The problem is governments misallocating and wasting funds.
- phonebanshee 5y agoMostly to corporate subsidies labeled "defense" spending.
- ars 5y agoThe world Strong Towns wants is emotionally unsustainable. Maybe there are people who can handle it, but I would go insane in the dense cities it suggests. Let the people who like dense towns live there, and stop trying to tell the rest of the people how to live. Strong Towns also tries to creates cities where no one from the outside ever comes in, since there's no way of getting there (no parking, not enough roads). People in large cities also like to "get away" during the summer - but there will be nowhere to go in his world.
- spoonjim 5y agoNobody’s telling you can’t live in a rural area. Just don’t ask me to pay for a road and a water main out to reach you from the city. Get a Jeep and dig a well and move if the water dries up.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoWhy was it possible to build it, but now it is impossible to maintain it?
- lotsofpulp 5y agoMaintaining things is not necessarily less costly or even viable, compared to building things. Also, labor costs have gone up dramatically due to a variety of factors. Increased safety standards, less supply of labor relative to demand, increased liabilities due to tort laws, etc. Also, borrowing from the future to build today is easy when population is exploding and you know everyone is having 3+ kids which will expand the tax base. That has not been true for quite a few decades now, with tax bases declining in many areas and political appetite for subsidizing those areas is waning, in my opinion. Less future growth means more restrained borrowing today. There is also a significant and increasing amount of the country’s resources being spent on keeping old people alive that was not the case when all the old infrastructure was built.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoHave there been no improvements to bridge building technology, that would make it cheaper today?
- lotsofpulp 5y agoI assume there have been, but based on all the reported costs of building infrastructure, I concluded that any reductions in costs must have been greatly offset by increases in costs.