2 thoughts on “Infrastructure”

  1. I think there was a similar story on DC not too long ago. Major segments of the city’s gas infrastructure constantly leaking. Similar situation in austerity stricken Britain. Manhole access locations randomly exploding around the city of London. 29 ‘incidents’ in 2012. They seem to have quit counting mid-year in 2013. Yet another fact of life to thank the 1% for.

  2. This is the result of sprawl — build new further and further out from city centers, and the developer easily convinces the locality to pick up the tab for future maintenance on the promise of new riches from the “new development.” Those new riches never really materialize, and are never sufficient to pay for ongoing maintenance, but since new construction doesn’t require much maintenance during the first 50 years, they can get by just fine. But as the neighborhood and infrastructure ages, it’s easier to just move further out and leave the locality unable to handle the maintenance on declining infrastructure.

    No one bothers to ask, “how much additional maintenance will this new development create?” And then compare it to the expected revenue increase before deciding whether to approve the development.

    We got away with this for a long time by having the feds and states bail out the cities. Now that the feds and states are reducing those payments back to the cities, and we have dramatically increased the amount of infrastructure that we have to maintain (without dramatically increasing city revenue (in concert with flat or declining populations in the rust belt cities particularly)).

    The only answer seems to be that we need to abandon some of the infrastructure and refocus on improving the infrastructure we can afford. Sorry outer suburbs. Sorry fifth highway lane.

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