From roads to airports, bridges to power grids – why America is falling apart at the seams

Sunday, March 22, 2015
By Paul Martin

The US economy is under threat because of its neglected infrastructure
Public spending on roads, airports, bridges, railways and power grids is only half of Europe’s, and some say the nation’s very prosperity is threatened

RUPERT CORNWELL
IndependentUK
Sunday 22 March 2015

Ah, the first signs of spring in the capital of the free world. Thickening buds on the azaleas and dogwoods, the start of the Cherry Blossom festival, and the new baseball season (can the hometown Nationals win the World Series?) just a fortnight away. Oh yes, and the potholes.
This spring they’re worse than ever. Not just on the back roads but on major highways too, some of them veritable elephant traps. Hit a couple of them at speed and your car’s a candidate for the knacker’s yard. America being America, some clever person has even come up with a dollar number for the damage they cause – $6.4bn (£4.2bn) for 2014, which was also a pretty brutal winter in the eastern US. This year will surely be no less costly.

Potholes are an unavoidable fact of life in climates such as Washington’s, of successive freezes and thaws, rainstorms and snowstorms, and God knows what corrosive chemicals slathered on the roads to keep them open. Indubitably though, there are now more potholes than ever. And they are a symptom of a far deeper crisis, one that some say threatens the very economic pre-eminence of America.

The way to eliminate potholes, or at least diminish their number, is to keep the roads in good shape, with regular resurfacing. But far less is being done than required. And the same goes for the rest of the infrastructure in the US: not just roads, but ports and airports, bridges, railways and power grids, those boring basics that keep a country running. America, to believe the title of a recent television documentary on the subject, is falling apart – literally.

The Rest…HERE

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