It’s the infrastructure, stupid!

It’s the infrastructure, stupid!

Since my current mode of transportation — a dearly beloved 1993 Chevy Lumina Euro — is about to give up the ghost (actually, some say it already has), I’ve been looking at all the new cars available on the market today. I must say they’re really impressive. Automotive electronics has advanced rapidly in the last decade, and vehicles are not only safer than ever before, but are also more fun to drive and have more useful functions, like GPS navigation and wireless emergency communication, than at any time in the past.

But I drive over New York City roads to work everyday, and the idea of buying a brand new vehicle to commute in worries me. It’s not that I have to contend with some pretty aggressive drivers, the dent-threat of parking lots, and the risks of becoming a target of Midnight Auto Supply’s local representatives. What really scares me is the condition of the roads I drive over. What they could do to the suspension and undercarriage of a new vehicle is enough to make me want to simply go for a used car, preferably one that’s capable of escaping from charging rhinos on the deep-rutted muddy tracts of the African Veld.

I’m sure that while their are better roads in other parts of North America, the problems with decaying transportation infrastructure that I encounter every day are not unique to NYC. Indeed, the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis last August is but the most recent reminder that the roadways in this country are in serious trouble.

The investigation of that incident by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board lays the cause in part to a flaw in the 40-year-old design of the bridge. “The design flaw revelations are only the tips of a very damning iceberg,” claims Barry B. LePatner, a NYC-based lawyer who specializes in the construction industry. “In 40 years, new calculations were never made to determine how much weight the bridge should be holding in today’s conditions . . . no one ever said, ‘Wait a minute — let’s make sure this bridge can handle all these changes that have occurred.’ To me that’s terrifying.”

LePatner also points out that the I-35 bridge was not on the list of 72,000 bridges the federal government labels “structurally deficient” or the 80,000 “functionally obsolete ones.” In his book, Broken Bridges, Busted Budgets , he notes that the construction industry invests relatively little in technology and is heavily fragmented into mom-and-pop companies, which is a factor in preventing such investment.

Since the U.S. doesn’t seem adverse to rebuilding the infrastructure in Mid-Eastern countries, perhaps it could also consider putting serious money into evaluating, maintaining, and upgrading its own road system. I admit I have a vested self-interest in this, because I’d really like to buy one of the new advanced-technology vehicles I’ve been drooling over.

Richard Comerford