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posted by cmn32480 on Monday April 17 2017, @12:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the watch-where-you-drink-and-drive dept.

The World Socialist Web Site reports

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released its quadrennial "Report Card" last month on the condition of infrastructure in the United States. Once again, the association gave the country an overall grade of D+, the same as in 2013.

The report is a damning appraisal of the state of American society under capitalism, and the Obama years, which saw essential social needs starved of funding while the stock market tripled in value and vast public resources were squandered on war. This will only accelerate under Trump.

The ASCE report assesses the state of sixteen different categories of infrastructure: aviation, bridges, dams, drinking water, energy, hazardous waste, inland waterways, levees, parks and recreation, ports, rail, roads, schools, solid waste, transit and wastewater.

Twelve of the sixteen sections evaluated earned a D grade. The report defines a D grade as "The infrastructure is in poor to fair condition and mostly below standard, with many elements approaching the end of their service life. A large portion of the system exhibits significant deterioration. Condition and capacity are of serious concern with strong risk of failure."

According to ASCE, the total costs to bring all US infrastructure into an adequate condition would exceed two trillion dollars.

[...] ASCE's answer to this crisis is not only inadequate but downright reactionary.

[...] In the section of the report titled "solutions to raise the grade" the authors suggest that "Infrastructure owners and operators must charge, and Americans must be willing to pay, rates and fees that reflect the true cost of using, maintaining, and improving infrastructure." Other sections advocate "user generated fees", hiking the gasoline tax, and other regressive proposals that would disproportionately affect the country's poorest citizens. The report also calls for more "public-private" partnerships, along with the streamlining of approval for private investment in public infrastructure projects.

Such free-market measures would only create an ever-greater class-based infrastructure system, where only those who could afford to will be able to drive on high toll expressways and bridges, send their children to quality schools, drink clean water, and live in areas not threatened with constant flooding or environmental disasters.

View the ASCE's report card here.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @08:40AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @08:40AM (#495159)

    It's nice that all the roads where you are could sustain 120mph travel because they are in such awesome shape.
    It's also nice to know that you don't have any bridges falling into rivers. [google.com]

    I'm also glad to hear that you have 10gbps internet with no caps and five 9s of uptime.

    I'm also jealous of your electric service which hasn't gone down multiple times with an electric company knowing that the service is underspec'd and them shining-on the upgrade for 2 summers.

    Many major surface streets around here are years behind on maintenance and the sidewalks are just pitiful.
    I guess we're lucky that we don't need more bridges.

    Maybe the folks in NYC can describe how their water system is over a century old and leaks about as much water as it delivers.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @07:49PM (1 child)

    by kaszz (4211) on Monday April 17 2017, @07:49PM (#495451) Journal

    What do you think about three phase to the home? makes running power motors way easier..

    (and lead free water luxury..)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @08:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @08:48PM (#495481)

      That would add complexity, so the power company wouldn't do it.
      The expense of adding a 3rd conductor and all the insulators to support that wouldn't fly unless they were already feeding an industrial area along that run.

      It wouldn't have solved my problem anyway.
      Each time, we lost 1 phase because the transformer was underspec'd (increased demand in this neighborhood over the years) and a fuse at the transformer blew repeatedly.
      Edison knew what the problem was but they dragged their feet until they had multiple outages and a bunch of pissed-off customers (very much like the way MICROS~1 handles security updates).

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]