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High Cost of Wars Affects America's Infrastructure
The
American Society of Civil Engineers issued a cry of alarm five years
ago in the form of three separate report cards on the state of the
nation's infrastructure in 15 major categories — from bridges to
rail lines, pipelines, dams, waterways, highways, and all other
publicly regulated facilities.
26
April, 2012
Steam
pipes under Manhattan are almost 100 years old and underground
explosions occur with dangerous regularity, sending geysers of hot
steam skyward.
U.S.
infrastructure repairs and new projects have been repeatedly
postponed as defense requirements and two wars over the past 11 years
took priority.
Airports
from Abu Dhabi to Singapore to Shanghai entered the 21st century with
state-of-the-art infrastructure that handles Airbus's 550-passenger
super jumbos faster and more efficiently than Washington's Dulles or
New York's JFK can handle passenger loads half that size.
The
pride of America's passenger trains — the northeastern corridor's
Acela — can reach a top speed of 150 mph on a straight stretch but
seldom exceeds 120 mph due to inadequate roadbeds. China already
boasts the world's longest high-speed rail network and plans to
double its length to 10,000 miles by 2020.
The
Chinese bullet train's top speed of 220 mph cuts a 125-mile trip to
45 minutes.
The
819-mile, high-speed Beijing-Shanghai track was laid between April
2008 and Nov. 15, 2010. Non-stop trains do the run in 3 hours, 58
minutes. And the passenger capacity runs 220,000 per day.
The
old track handles intermediary stops between the two major cities and
the Beijing-Shanghai journey runs 9 hours, 50 minutes.
Infrastructure
has been a key U.S. priority — on paper. On average, since World
War II, the United States earmarked 3 percent of its gross domestic
product to infrastructure. But this was cut by one-third to 2 percent
since 1980.
China
and India, by comparison, respectively, spend 9 and 5 percent of
their GDP on infrastructure, says U.S. Chamber of Commerce Chief
Executive Officer Thomas J. Donahue.
As
U.S. national priorities changed, the U.S. government gradually
shifted the lion's share of its infrastructure responsibilities from
federal to state and local. Thus, the federal government moved an
estimated 75 percent of public infrastructure costs off its books.
Years
of deferred infrastructure costs followed.
Both
the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers
launched campaigns to rebuild America's rapidly crumbling
infrastructure.
Almost
2,000 bridges have collapsed since the 1960s.
ASCE
said in 2005 that vehicle travel on all public roads in the United
States increased from 600 billion vehicle miles in the mid-1950s to 3
trillion vehicle miles — with 700 billion of them on the interstate
highway system.
In
other words, bridges are aging, traffic is increasing and state and
local revenues are shrinking. A perfect national tsunami is in the
making.
ASCE
gives U.S. transit systems a D+.
Below
ground, the United States has 2.5 million miles of pipeline —
enough pipe to circle the globe 100 times. One-third of them are 40
years old or older and, says ASCE, they don't receive the care they
need.
Starting
next year, industry will be shedding 1.26 trillion gallons of
untreated sewage every year. And ASCE estimates $2.2 trillion is
needed over the next five years to fix it. And no one seems to have a
clue on how to fix it before it becomes a national tragedy.
The
Federal Highway Administration says 11 percent of total highway
bridges in the United States are "structurally deficient"
and require "significant" rehabilitation or outright
replacement.
The
average age of a U.S. bridge is 42 years. But almost 200,000 of the
nation's 600,000 highway bridges are 50 years old or older. That
number is expected to double by 2030. Almost $100 billion is needed
"NOW!" to handle the backlog of deficient bridges.
Bridge
safety is a top national priority, several congressional studies
state, but federal programs fail to meet the need. Funding for wars —
Iraq and Afghanistan — is at $1.6 trillion and still a climbing
priority where needs are invariably met.
Congress,
in yet another exercise in muddled thinking, spends only 13 percent
of available funds on bridge repair and rehabilitation. Countless
millions of vehicles are traveling across structurally deficient
bridges.
Another
ASCE reports says "as dams age and downstream development
increases, the number of deficient dams has risen to more than 4,000,
including 1,819 high-hazard potential dams. Over the past six years,
for every deficient, high-hazard potential dam repaired, nearly two
more were declared deficient. There are more than 85,000 dams in the
U.S., and the average age is just over 51 years old."
The
Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimates the total cost to
repair the nation's dams at $50 billion; the urgently needed
investment to repair high hazard potential dams at $16 billion.
ASDSO
also says the backlog of deficient dams is more than 4,000.
In
yet another report, ASCE said that by 2020 there will be an estimated
738,000 fewer jobs created "if the U.S. continues its current
level of investments in seaports." And by 2040, these same job
losses "will amount to 1.4 million."
In
this report, titled "Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of
Current Investment Trends in Airports, Inland Waterways and Marine
Ports," ASCE concluded that "to accommodate growth in
waterborne traffic, future spending needs are estimated to total $30
billion by 2020 and $92 billion by 2040."
ASCE's
overall bottom line: At current investment levels, losses will
accumulate every year to a total loss of nearly $4 trillion to the
national GDP and $7.9 trillion in lost business through 2040.
Sequestration
in January won't only inflict major cutbacks in defense spending but
in all federal programs, including transportation infrastructure that
will translate into losses in trade, jobs, and tax revenues.
The
Hill's Congress Blog says "evident by (ASCE's report findings)
budget cuts to our waterways and seaports equate to even higher job
losses and reduced GDP, which will only increase our nation's
deficit."
Noted
editor and journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave is an editor at large for
United Press International. He is a founding board member of
Newsmax.com who now serves on Newsmax's Advisory Board.
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