Infrastructure For The Next Century: What Americans Will Need To Build Next

Forbes ^ | October 3, 2018 | Michele Lerner

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

If Elon Musk’s Boring Company succeeds, the fantasy of slipping into a pod and being whisked from Washington, D.C. to New York City in less than 30 minutes may become a reality.

As startling as that might be, such transformational projects are nothing new. Think of how Americans of a half-century ago felt once the national interstate highway system was complete and a cross-country road trip shortened from two weeks to five days. Infrastructure improvements in the U.S. – such as the interstate system, built in the 1950s and 1960s, the first transcontinental railway in the 1860s, and the Erie Canal, completed in 1825 – changed the lives of scores of millions of people while boosting the economic prospects of the country as a whole.

These days, there’s a general sense that we’ve fallen behind when it comes to completing necessary infrastructural projects – our infrastructure even became a political issue in the last election cycle. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that the U.S. will lose $7 trillion in business sales by 2025 due to an investment gap amounting to half of what we need to maintain and improve our national infrastructure. What steps do we need to take to prevent infrastructure-related monetary losses – and drive infrastructure-associated innovation on a national scale?

“We need someone with a vision like Eisenhower had for the interstate system, someone who also has the will and the leadership to be savvy enough to push people to spend the capital required for a major infrastructure project,” said Henry Petroski, author of “The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure” and a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University. “It takes someone passionate and dedicated to implement the technology that exists and other innovations on the horizon.”

[DoodleDawg]

We can’t keep our existing infrastructure in shape.

[John Locke]

Sorry, won’t work. L1 is unstable, and it would need a lot of energy to heep anything parked there from falling elsewhere.

[Little Ray]

We need to start with hardening the power grid.
At the very least, we need to be able to repair it after another Carrington Event. We also need to secure it against cyber warfare - if possible take it completely off the Internet.

[indthkr]

Infrastructure is important but risky.

Disruptive technology, economic, and political changes can obliterate infrastructure investments that were designed and built to last a century.

[Albion Wilde]

“We need someone with a vision like Eisenhower had for the interstate system, someone who also has the will and the leadership to be savvy enough to push people to spend the capital required for a major infrastructure project,” said Henry Petroski, author of “The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure” and a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University. “It takes someone passionate and dedicated to implement the technology that exists and other innovations on the horizon”

...he said, and probably voted against Trump, the builder.