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America’s Failing Infrastructure

America’s greatest generation built the world’s greatest infrastructure network.

Building…

Roads
1950′s: Eisenhower Interstate Highway System[6]
Over 47,000 miles of interstates
Today:Close to 4 million miles of total roads
Enough to circle the Earth 160 times

Rails
1860′s: First intercontinental railroads constructed
Today:150,000 miles of mainline track
The busiest and largest rail system in the world

Bridges
1950′s: Louisiana’s Lake Ponchetrain Bridge (24 miles) is the longest bridge in America completed.[1]
Today: 607,380 bridges

Tunnels
1979: the Eisenhower tunnel spans 1.7 miles through mountains west of Denver. At 11,000+ feet it is the highest point of the Interstate Highway System.[2]

Canals
1825: Erie Canal connects the great lakes to the Atlantic through NYC.[3]
1914: Panama Canal finished, cutting off 8,000 miles from the the NY to LA sea route.

Ports
April 6th 1776: defying British rule, all American colony ports are opened to international trade.[4]
Today: 360 commercial ports in the U.S. ship $1.73 million in goods, or 11% of total GDP [5]

Airports
1909: College Park Airport in Maryland is the oldest continually operating airport in the world. Founded by Wilbur Wright. [8]
Today: Over 640 million passengers and 19.6 billion pounds of shipped goods in 2013.[7]

But over time it’s failed to adapt.

BY 2010, America wasn’t even in the top ten for infrastructure competitiveness:
1.) Hong Kong
2.) Germany
3.) United Arab Emirates
4.) France
5.) Singapore
6.) Switzerland
7.) Netherlands
8.) United Kingdom x
9.) Canada
10.) Sweden
…
15.) United States

Which costs a lot, personally, and nationally.

Personally: Even with higher household earnings, we spend more money on transportation than other developed nations.
[% of household earnings spent on transportation]
America: 17.6%
Canada: 14%
EU: 13%
Japan: 12.5%

That’s $8,810 yearly per family![$50,054 x .176]

With 4.8 billion hours wasted in traffic jams in 2008.[9]
TO the tune of 3.9 billion gallons of gas.

Nationally: Freight bottlenecks and congestion cost about $200 billion[9]
Or 1.6% of the U.S. GDP in losses each year.

Chicago is the nations largest railroad center.
Due to congestion, it currently takes a freight train longer to travel through Chicago’s city limits than it takes for a train to travel from Chicago to L.A.

View Full Version (BestMSWPrograms.com): America’s Failing Infrastructure

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 4th, 2013 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Aging Infrastructure, Aviation, Bridges, Infra Views, Rail, Roads, Seaports . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.