I think this leans on a thing that I think of as the "law of average quality." The belief that there's some mark, near the middle, and things below that mark ar

I think this leans on a thing that I think of as the "law of average quality." The belief that there's some mark, near the middle, and things below that mark are bad, and things above that mark are good. It's something that is only true if you're comparing things against themselves. If there are any external goals for the things being discussed, almost everything can be bad (and correspondingly, almost everything can be good.) I feel like this thought process leads to the "worst possible category" containing 42k bridges. The construction of the categories was based around whether the bridge is safe, and this category says "the bridge is not safe." It's when you put it off long enough, and let the infrastructure deteriorate long enough, that you start going "which is the most unsafe though?" Or, "is a safety factor even necessary? They are by definition a >1.0 factor applied to what we think is safe." Then, "one in a hundred year events" or "once in a decade events." Eventually it's "hasn't collapsed yet!" The fact that the list got that big means our problem isn't prioritization, our problem is failing to repair bridges. Commit to and budget for repairing 42k bridges, then prioritize where you start.