Infrastructure underpins adaptation -- deferred maintenance is a peril

Terra Daily, via UPI: The collapse of an eight-lane interstate bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis that was under repair reminds us that 30 percent of America's almost 500,000 bridges are categorized as "deficient" and in "urgent need of repair." The Iraq and Afghan wars have cost more than half a trillion dollars so far. The two conflicts are running at the rate of $12 billion a month, or $400 million a day. The bill for urgent work on the nation's bridges is estimated at $80 billion.

The general need for repairs of the nation's bridges has been reported scores of times by all media. Congress and states seldom agree about their respective funding responsibilities. Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war shrunk funding for bridge repairs.

In 11 Northeastern states, 50 percent of bridges not only need urgent repairs but are not designed to handle current traffic levels. The situation is more acute in these states because of winter-weather corrosion. Many of the bridges are 50 years or older.…

There is a constant race between the cost of building materials and the steady increase in traffic, especially trucks. NYSDOT projects the number of miles traveled in this one state alone at 180 billion in the next two decades, up from 137.5 billion today.

The Federal Highway Administration's Strategic Plan stated in 1998 that it planned to decrease the percentage of deficient bridges to 25 percent by 2008. This, too, was a bridge too far. Research labs in the United States and abroad have developed a new generation of construction materials -- glass, plastic and carbon -- for bridges that will resist corrosion. But they are costly. China, which went from bicycles to automobiles and trucks in less than a generation, has been building new bridges with polymer composites.

Despite major renovations of U.S. infrastructure, an estimated $1.6 trillion is still needed over five years to bring it to "safe standards." Bridges, roads, railroads and waterways all have been short-changed by the war on terror. Even before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks a "Report Card for America's Infrastructure" graded 12 infrastructure categories at a D-plus.