Minn. Bridge Collapse Reveals Brittle America

[PLOlover]

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Then what are all those orange cones doing all over the highways with the people in orange vests driving those big machines around?

Seriously. No preventive maintenance? No work being done on our infrastructure?

Do you people even understand the ridiculous things you write?

There's construction and maintenance on bridges and highways all over the place every year. The city I live in completely replaced at least 3 old bridges over the rivers in the 7 years since I've been here, and added one brand new one, and completely redid the interstate junction with brand new bridges/exit ramps. The city I lived in before that also completely redid their interstate junction with brand new bridges/exit ramps in the 3 years I was there.

Is it enough? I don't know. But it is surely greater than ZERO.

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did you watch the video? I mean yeah some areas are in good shape, but there's a reason the country's infrastructure is graded at D+ or D- or whatever. I mean, did you hear about the manhattan explosion recently where the gas pipe or whatever was 100 years old or whatever?

[Kaj]

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Then what are all those orange cones doing all over the highways with the people in orange vests driving those big machines around?

Seriously. No preventive maintenance? No work being done on our infrastructure?

Do you people even understand the ridiculous things you write?

There's construction and maintenance on bridges and highways all over the place every year. The city I live in completely replaced at least 3 old bridges over the rivers in the 7 years since I've been here, and added one brand new one, and completely redid the interstate junction with brand new bridges/exit ramps. The city I lived in before that also completely redid their interstate junction with brand new bridges/exit ramps in the 3 years I was there.

Is it enough? I don't know. But it is surely greater than ZERO.

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did you watch the video? I mean yeah some areas are in good shape, but there's a reason the country's infrastructure is graded at D+ or D- or whatever. I mean, did you hear about the manhattan explosion recently where the gas pipe or whatever was 100 years old or whatever?

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I saw the video. For the most part it was clips of "the sky is falling" nightly news stories on local stations. Yawn.

[Borodog]

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Cynic Alert: Report was issued by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). You don't think they have an interest in buliding new bridges, do you? I am reminded of the P.J. O'Rourke quote that putting lawyers in charge of laws is like putting doctors in charge of disease.

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Or bankers in charge of the money supply.

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Snappy line, but why would someone want to depreciate their own assets?

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Because fiat money is not actually wealth. It is tickets to acquire wealth. And printing tickets to acquire real wealth out of thin air is a lucrative business to be in. Since this would be slightly too transparent of a scam, what they actually do is print tickets to acquire wealth out of thin air and then loan them out at interest.

Hope that helps.

[kidpokeher]

Anyone who thinks our roads and bridges aren't in bad shape either hasn't lived very long or hasn't gotten out of the house much. In a recently cross country drive, I was amazed at what horrible conditions even the major highways were in. Oklahoma in particular I pulled to the side of the road to check as the vibration caused by the uneven roads were so bad I was sure I blew a tire. Other states I hit potholes so deep I'm sure I would've broke something if I wasn't driving a truck with new tires.

[Kaj]

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Anyone who thinks our roads and bridges aren't in bad shape either hasn't lived very long or hasn't gotten out of the house much. In a recently cross country drive, I was amazed at what horrible conditions even the major highways were in. Oklahoma in particular I pulled to the side of the road to check as the vibration caused by the uneven roads were so bad I was sure I blew a tire. Other states I hit potholes so deep I'm sure I would've broke something if I wasn't driving a truck with new tires.

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Just send an extra few thousand to the state of Oklahoma with a note asking them to fix their roads to your satisfaction. I've been driving for 25 years and yes, there are potholes out there, yet in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of miles I have driven, never once has the condition of the road given me so much as a single flat tire. Guess I'm lucky to not live with the horrors you have experienced.

[ALawPoker]

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Fact of Life - The cost of the occassional collapse is less than the cost of fixing them all. The bridges wouldn't get fixed if they were owned by private companies.

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You do realize that in a society where people did not basically accept occasional bridge collapses as inevitable, that the "cost" of a bridge collapsing would be critical, don't you? I'm not sure why you assume it would be no big deal to be the one company whose bridge collapsed and is responsible for 7 deaths. It might seem like a mediocre deal, but that's only because when the government controls an industry and our choices don't really matter, there isn't much to really expect will be changed other than the formation of some investigatory committee. If you heard a mailman murdered someone when he handed them their mail, you probably wouldn't think much beyond "that's horrible," but if you heard a UPS driver did it, you might switch to FedEx. And that's not even a good example.

But just look at all the media attention and backlash you see when one person gets sick from Taco Bell. I can't imagine a bridge collapsing and killing people would be good for the future of your business under free market standards.

[PLOlover]

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I saw the video. For the most part it was clips of "the sky is falling" nightly news stories on local stations. Yawn.

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well it was just about the LA electricity infrastructure problem. Actually it was kinda an infomercial by the LA city union or something warning of impending problems, so I can see why you would be skeptical, but I think when you couple it with objective assessments that peg stuff at D-, you have to give it more weight than just a contract negotiation thing.

[kidpokeher]

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Anyone who thinks our roads and bridges aren't in bad shape either hasn't lived very long or hasn't gotten out of the house much. In a recently cross country drive, I was amazed at what horrible conditions even the major highways were in. Oklahoma in particular I pulled to the side of the road to check as the vibration caused by the uneven roads were so bad I was sure I blew a tire. Other states I hit potholes so deep I'm sure I would've broke something if I wasn't driving a truck with new tires.

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Just send an extra few thousand to the state of Oklahoma with a note asking them to fix their roads to your satisfaction. I've been driving for 25 years and yes, there are potholes out there, yet in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of miles I have driven, never once has the condition of the road given me so much as a single flat tire. Guess I'm lucky to not live with the horrors you have experienced.

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Gee Kaj, thanks for showing me the error of my ways. In addition to sending that check I'll retract everything I said. Thanks to your post I now realize driving cross country was really like sleeping on a Tempurpedic. Obviously I was misinformed.

Stay lucky.

[MrMon]

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Cynic Alert: Report was issued by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). You don't think they have an interest in buliding new bridges, do you? I am reminded of the P.J. O'Rourke quote that putting lawyers in charge of laws is like putting doctors in charge of disease.

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Or bankers in charge of the money supply.

[/ QUOTE ]

Snappy line, but why would someone want to depreciate their own assets?

[/ QUOTE ]

Because fiat money is not actually wealth. It is tickets to acquire wealth. And printing tickets to acquire real wealth out of thin air is a lucrative business to be in. Since this would be slightly too transparent of a scam, what they actually do is print tickets to acquire wealth out of thin air and then loan them out at interest.

Hope that helps.

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In the interest of not hijacking this thread, I'll try and respond to this in the other thread, where I still owe you a reply. Which still requires some work.

[CORed]

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The power grid is aging too, and becoming overworked/overloaded.

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This would seem to indicate that privatization of roads might not help the problem. The power grid is mostly private. Not so many years ago, the private sector, especially large corporations and especially regulated monopoly public utilities did a pretty good job of maintenance.

Lately though, it seems the focus on maximizing this quarters profits has become so pervasive that preventive maintenance is falling by the wayside. It seems that corporate management can't seem to look beyond the next p/l statement and keep the equipment that earns their money in good shape. The philosophy now is "if it ain't broke, or even if it's just a little bit broke, don't fix it. So they end up with huge losses from downtime and bigger repair bills than if they'd done it right.