This came through my Google Home page, and is credited to the Bangkok Post... The Article is HERE
Washington (dpa) - Even before a deadly highway bridge collapse in Minnesota state, Americans had warnings that infrastructure is crumbling in the world's richest nation.
Experts have said for years that US roads, bridges, water supplies, electricity grids, schools and railroads are strained and ageing, eaten away by tight money for maintenance and expansion.
Wednesday's crash of a highway span into the Mississippi River, which killed at least five, has confronted Americans with the crisis - and emboldened critics who say some of the 500 billion dollars spent on the Iraq war should have been used to rebuild America.
"This is yet another wakeup call for the nation's infrastructure," said James Oberstar, a US Congressman from Minnesota.
Still stung by his government's botched emergency response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, President George W Bush scheduled a visit to the stricken city of Minneapolis for Saturday.
People from other rich nations often marvel at America's perilous state of repair. Overhead power and telephone lines regularly snap in storms, key roads are scarred with pot-holes. Last month, an underground steam pipe explosion in New York killed a woman.
Many parts of the 74,000-kilometre US national highway system are between 40 and 60 years old, but fixing the problem is another story. Pouring tens of billions of dollars into renewal would mean unpopular tax hikes - notably on fuel.
Minnesota's Republican governor Tim Pawlenty in May vetoed a 5- cent petrol tax increase, the state's first in nearly 20 years, that might have gone to road repair.
Yet the crisis runs deeper, involving state governments as well as federal authorities, Republicans and Democrats.
"Both political parties have tried to govern on the cheap, and both have dithered and dallied and spent public wealth on stadiums while scrimping on the basics," columnist Nick Coleman wrote in the local Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Shame is overdue."
US needs are huge by any measure. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives much of the nation's infrastructure near-failing grades and estimates that 1.6 trillion dollars over five years are needed to bring it to "a good condition."
Another daunting statistic emerged in the wake of the Minneapolis disaster: about a quarter of the nation's nearly 600,000 bridges have structural problems or are outdated.
Every state has interstate highway spans that government inspectors have declared structurally deficient, led by tiny Rhode Island, where the figure is 24 per cent.
The Minnesota bridge reportedly had a structural rating in the lowest 6 per cent of urban bridges in the interstate highway system. Inspectors found problems as far back as 1990, but declared no imminent danger as recently as last summer.
In response to the collapse, the US government urged all states to inspect any highway bridges similar to the one that collapsed.
US Transportation Secretary Mary Peters also ordered a review of the national bridge inspection programme, which has been looking at ways to improve its technology.
But the emotional impact was summed up by Amy Klobuchar, a US senator from Minnesota who lives about 10 blocks from the bridge.
"A bridge in the middle of America just shouldn't fall into a river," she said.
The last big US bridge collapse blamed on structural failure happened on the New York State Thruway in 1987, killing 10 people. Several major highway collapses since then were caused by accidents or earthquakes.
Now, officials say it may take years to find out what went wrong with the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. I've been playing a bit of "Age of Empires" lately.. one thing I've learned is that you can't put all of your resources into fun stuff. If you spend all your money on developing a fun place to live, you neglect important things like bridge maintenance.
Perhaps city officials should spend some time with some of Cid Myer's other video game creations, Like SimCity.
