About a week ago, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) put out its 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, a “comprehensive assessment of the nation’s infrastructure across 16 sectors.” The nation got a D+, which, humiliatingly, is actually a slight increase from the last go-round four years ago.
Here in Washington State, we are first in renewable energy, out of all the states. But we are faced with the unpleasant and yet unsurprising news that, with 83,505 public road miles, 67 percent of those roads are in poor or mediocre condition. Almost five percent of our bridges are rated structurally deficient (see “Seattle’s Worst Bridges“), with more than 20 percent “functionally obsolete.” Downstreamers, note that we also have 227 “high hazard” dams, and that each employee whose job it is to check on them oversees an average of 121 different dams.
What does that mean for you, besides white knuckles and expostulations? Well, the roads situation sucks up $1.35 billion a year in vehicle repairs and operating costs, say the engineers. That works out to $242 per driver. (Car tab fees for a standard vehicle run to $43.75. The gas tax is 37 and a half cents, which in inflation-adjusted pennies, is less than the tax throughout the 1950s and ’60s.)
Interestingly, highway vehicle-miles traveled in 2009 came to about 8,482 per capita, which leaves Washington 41st among states. Oddly, driving more nets you a higher ranking. Strange road-fellows: Alaska is 50th, with just 6,700 highway miles traveled per capita, in a virtual tie with New York State.
“Roads: Why Fix Them When You Can Build More?” asks Sightline sardonically, while noting that “traffic volumes on state highways have remained roughly flat for a decade.” Yet the bulk of a proposed new House transportation package is directed to highway expansion, not maintenance. This is not mention the unfunded needs for megaprojects already underway.
Just for the purposes of priority comparison: the deep-bore tunnel for SR 99 is short $235 million from anticipated toll revenue. Our entire state parks system is short $218 million, notes ASCE. “Washington state’s park system turns 100 this year, but not since the Great Depression has it been so imperiled,” begins the latest Seattle Times story on the subject. (See also: “Why is the Legislature Trying to Kill Washington State Parks?“)
Maybe we need to elect more civil engineers.
Further reading: Sightline’s “How to Fix the Washington Transportation Package.”
You can elect all the civil engineers you want, but that won’t change a thing. The problem is that governments at all levels are starved of the funds they need to maintain our infrastructure. Our society has chosen to give money to the rich and to large corporations rather than to use that money for things like maintenance and sustainable infrastructure. This is a political problem and can only be solved by organizing to take money from those who have it and use it to address problems like this.
I’m not entirely opposed to that reading of the situation — I mention that gas tax, outside of inflation, has not increased for a half-century. But that said, the prioritization of new projects over upkeep of the existing stock is a particular kind of insanity given the budgetary issues.