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Aging infrastructure
Aug. 2nd, 2007 08:28 amI don't do bridges. However, deferred maintenance rules a lot of my projects. The pigeon loft? Roof leaks for several decades. As the guy in the ad said, "You can pay me now or pay me later." That building came within literal inches of collapse.
Various DOT engineers, state and federal, have been muttering for years about the age of the Interstate Highway System and "projected useful life." We started building those roads in the 1950s. Maine has just finished replacing a suspension bridge downriver from us, built in the 1930s, because strands in the suspension cables were breaking. They had to bar trucks and even large motor homes from crossing until the new span opened. Added over fifty miles to the route, upstream to the next bridge and back down again, on the only major coastal highway...
Roads, bridges, dams, water systems, you name it -- we need to spend billions of dollars each year just to hold entropy at bay. Red queen, running as fast as we can to stay in one place.
Instead, we have powerful senators "earmarking" new bridges to nowhere.
Various DOT engineers, state and federal, have been muttering for years about the age of the Interstate Highway System and "projected useful life." We started building those roads in the 1950s. Maine has just finished replacing a suspension bridge downriver from us, built in the 1930s, because strands in the suspension cables were breaking. They had to bar trucks and even large motor homes from crossing until the new span opened. Added over fifty miles to the route, upstream to the next bridge and back down again, on the only major coastal highway...
Roads, bridges, dams, water systems, you name it -- we need to spend billions of dollars each year just to hold entropy at bay. Red queen, running as fast as we can to stay in one place.
Instead, we have powerful senators "earmarking" new bridges to nowhere.
