Every year, the American Society of Civil Engineers puts out a report card on the state of the nation’s infrastructure. That’s last year’s summary above, and the link has the details.
What does it mean to say that our infrastructure is somewhere between mediocre and poor? Many of the areas of concern are less important for themselves then they are as enablers of societal benefits: good parks contribute to our quality of life, and good transit and roads contribute to economic activity, for example.
At least one of the grades may be too high. The good grade for rail is based on the condition of and improvements to the rail network but, as is noted in the detail report, the rail network has shrunk even as the population has grown. Taking that logic to an extreme, a rail network that served fewer people better might get an A, which is not indicative of the usefulness of the network.
Since the next highest grades are C+ – somewhat better than mediocre – there’s nothing here to be particularly happy about. It’s possible that the ASCE is deflating the grades to make work for its members, but (a) the organization isn’t that powerful, and I don’t think the report card has a great influence on funding and (b) any familiarity with the different areas suggests that our infrastructure is indeed somewhere between mediocre and poor.
I don’t have an answer. The solution to many of the problems is improved maintenance and that’s just about the hardest sell in the built-environment professions. Anyone who has travelled internationally knows that the quality of infrastructure varies widely from one country to another and from area to area within large countries. That suggests that the ASCE report card may never be anything than aspirational.
