By the way... 6 years running and the federal building in Honolulu is still not done.
Posted on 07/02/2015 12:25:42 AM PDT by iowamark
Most politicians and transportation interest groups claim that America’s infrastructure is in bad shape. At a recent House Ways and Means Committee hearing, Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said our roads and bridges are in “a sorry state.” At the same hearing Bill Graves, president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations, reported, “Two-thirds of highways are in poor or mediocre condition.”
These statements are reinforced every time we drive over a pothole on the way to work. So it’s no surprise that many people think most roads in the United States are of poor quality. However, government statistics tell a different story. U.S. roads and bridges are not falling apart.
Each year state transportation agencies provide the federal government with comprehensive data on highway and bridge conditions. Highway quality is measured by a surface roughness index. The lower the index score, the better the quality of the road. Roads with index scores below 95 are considered to be in good condition, while higher index scores below 170 are acceptable.
The most recent data on highway quality is for the year 2012. The percentage of urban highways classified as either good or acceptable was about 80 percent in 2012, down about 5 percentage points from 10 years earlier. Some of the decline may reflect a postponement of maintenance during the great recession.
Almost 97 percent of rural highways were classified as either good or acceptable in 2012. This is about the same as 10 years earlier. Even with the recent quality drop for urban highways, a high percentage of our highways are in good or acceptable condition.
These figures mask the variation in road quality across states. For example, in 2012, almost 80 percent of Georgia’s urban highways were in good condition—the highest in the country—while about 15 percent of California’s urban highways were in good condition—the lowest in the country. Obviously, highway usage, weather conditions, and the quality of transportation agencies influence these figures. Using state-level quality figures, there is no statistical change in average urban and rural road quality over the 10-year period.
Taking a longer-term perspective, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago examined the quality of the interstate highway system for the period from 1980 to 2006. Using surface roughness index data provided by the government, they find the system’s road surface has become smoother and less deteriorated since the mid-1990s.
Transportation agencies report bridges as either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. A structurally deficient bridge is not considered unsafe, but it does imply a potential reduction in its load-carrying capacity and requires maintenance. A functionally obsolete bridge does not mean it fails to meet current design standards. It may simply mean that traffic flows over the bridge are more than expected.
The quality of bridges in the United States has improved. Using the most recent data, in 2014, 4.2 percent of bridges were classified as structurally deficient, down from 5.7 percent 10 years earlier. There has been little change in the percentage of functionally obsolete bridges over this time span.
Once again, there is variation across states. In 2014, for example, less than 1 percent of bridges in Texas were structurally deficient—the lowest in the country—while in Rhode Island, almost 24 percent were labelled structurally deficient. Conditions and management vary across states, but our bridges do not appear to be crumbling.
If you Google “crumbling highways and bridges” you get quite a few hits. Yet government statistics suggest that our transportation infrastructure is not in bad shape. People’s personal experience partly explains the divergence between hype and reality. Another reason is that our elected officials in Washington can capture votes by sending gasoline tax dollars home. They have much to gain by pushing the idea that our highways and bridges are falling apart.
Back when the propaganda was being pushed to raise the gas tax here in Iowa we kept hearing about what bad shape the rural bridges are in. I kept asking them why such dangerous structures are not closed. All I got was *crickets* in response.
I am sorry. George Mason University, not GWU.
http://mercatus.org/
“The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is the world’s premier university source for market-oriented ideas—bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.
A university-based research center, the Mercatus Center advances knowledge about how markets work to improve people’s lives by training graduate students, conducting research, and applying economics to offer solutions to society’s most pressing problems.
Our mission is to generate knowledge and understanding of the institutions that affect the freedom to prosper, and to find sustainable solutions that overcome the barriers preventing individuals from living free, prosperous, and peaceful lives.
Founded in 1980, the Mercatus Center is located on George Mason University’s Arlington campus.”
The author Robert Krol is a professor of economics at California State University, Northridge
Paul Ryan on our crumbling infrastructure.
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
“Highway funds” are spent on bicycle trails, buses and bus lanes, “high speed” rail, and assorted other nonsense. If there is any “shortage” it’s because of profligate misspending (thievery) by states (eg: Maryland, Delaware).
I'm supposed to accept "government statistics"? No!
If that's not enough then try I-81 from Harrisburg to Scranton, that'll jar some brain cells loose.
Drive through even remote parts of Nevada and the highways are usually made of freshly applied asphalt blacktop wherever you drive. Real nice and smooth sailing. We have a law in Nevada that demands that Federal highway road funds actually be used for highways.
Drive west out of Reno or Lake Tahoe into California, however, and the highway turns from coal-black asphalt and bright yellow painted lines to rutty grey potholes and obliterated paint as soon as you pass the ‘Welcome To California!’ sign. Feels like you’re driving through flak. California dumps its federal highway dollars into the state ‘general fund’.
Next thing you notice entering California are the signs that declare stiff penalties for speeding, driving without a seat belt, carrying produce, driving drunk, abandoning animals, littering, possession of fireworks, talking on your cell phone, and rolling your eyes at the gay rainbow flag. You get to try to read all of these mile by mile as your car bounces from pothole to pothole.
I’ve been tempted to put up a road sign on the Nevada side of the border heading into California reading “NOW LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR” in military-style stenciled black letters on a white background just like in West Berlin at ‘Checkpoint Charlie’.
Does he want more spending?
Screaming about the “nation’s crumbling infrastructure” is a ruse — a lie to get more money — for pet projects like bike trails and environmental boondoggles, or to shovel to well connected, crony capitalist road construction companies to put up fancy traffic monitoring systems that, while nice, should not be a priority in an era of trillion dollar deficits. Crumbling infrastructure is like “for the children” — a Pavlov Dog bell that gets the sucker taxpayers to open up their wallets to spend more on what the politicians want.
I am more concerned about America’s crumbling moral structure and the collapse of free enterprise and the willful destruction of my individual rights.
Yep. All those “shovel ready” jobs. Where did it go? It was all a ruse by the democrats so that they could have themselves a giant slush fund. A trillion in spending, down the toilet.
Post of the day.
If that’s not enough then try I-81 from Harrisburg to Scranton, that’ll jar some brain cells loose.
They have been working on 1-81 forever. Yet, it never gets fixed?
BOHICA
What happened to the stimulus and shovel ready?
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