Too Big To Fail: America's Failing Infrastructure

American infrastructure is aging, fast. Roads and bridges are failing, entire sections of the US and Canada have had lost power, effecting approximately 55,000,000 people, due to lack of tree maintenance, and many of the sewer and water lines in cities like New York are over 100 years old (Markowitz; Minkel). According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2013, the United States infrastructure network earns a grade of a D+, and requires a $3.6 trillion dollar investment by the year 2020 to make the grade (American Society of Civil Engineers). Infrastructure is a key part of modern life; we use it every day without thinking about it, and because of this, it goes neglected. Most people only think about the road that they are driving on when they hit a pothole; infrastructure is invisible, until it breaks. The fact that infrastructure is largely invisible means it gets neglected and abused, it is not an issue most people think about, politicians do not win by talking about it, and any solution in the near term generally requires raising taxes, making the subject more unpopular for the citizenship at large. The longer we ignore our infrastructure problems, the more it will cost to fix, and the more likely it is for a disaster to happen. One of

He details a long history of ill repair and modifications with the latest modification to the bridge, before it’s collapse taking place in 1997, but still leaving it inadequate to support it’s ever increasing load. From 1967 to 1997 the daily traffic load on the bridge nearly tripled, from 60,000 vehicles per day, to approximately 160,000 per day at the time of it’s collapse. The increased traffic load, along with the increased weight from subsequent modifications, outpaced the bridge’s structural design (LePatner,