The Nation’s Bones Are Obsolete and Deficient

Today, courtesy of the American Society of Civil Engineers, we have arranged a whirlwind tour of these United States:

We begin in Philadelphia. Here, in 1776, Americans decided to build themselves a country founded on principles and in a form “most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” But oops, hang on here as our bus crosses the Delaware River: 29% of the country’s bridges are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.”

Let’s move on to New England, where great centers of higher learning produce many of the MBA’s that direct the country’s mighty economy. Never mind those rundown buildings along the way. They’re just public schools. “Due to either aging or outdated facilities, or severe overcrowding, 75% of our nation’s school buildings are inadequate to meet the needs of schoolchildren.”

Let’s go down the Eastern seaboard past vast cities. You may wish to hold your nose for awhile. “The nation’s 16,000 waste water systems face enormous needs. Some sewer systems are 100 years old.”

All aboard a train now. Ridership on mass transit has increased 15% in America since 1995. Unfortunately, “Capital spending must increase 41% just to maintain the system in its present condition.”

We are now entering New Jersey, famous as the home of “The Sopranos” and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Uh, you might want to avoid that drinking fountain. “The nation’s 54,000 drinking water systems face an annual shortfall of $11 billion needed to replace facilities that are nearing the end of their useful life and to comply with federal water regulations.”

We will now board an airplane to fly across this great country. Please be patient. “Airport capacity has increased only 1% in the past 10 years, while air traffic has increased 37%. Last year, congestion delayed nearly 50,000 flights in a single month.” Watch out! That was close. “There were 429 runway incursions (near misses) reported in 2000, up 25% from 1999.”

Now that we’re aloft, look down and see many man-made reservoirs below us. Lucky we’re up here. “There are more than 2,100 unsafe dams in the United States. There were 61 reported dam failures in the past two years.”

Here we are in Los Angeles, where America’s future and fantasy meet. Sit back for our drive to downtown. Residents waste $12.4 billion of their time every year in traffic jams. But hold on. “One-third of the nation’s major roads are in poor or mediocre conditions,” which contributes to “as many as 13,800 highway fatalities annually” and costs motorists “an estimated $5.8 billion a year” in service and repairs.

Thank you. We hope you enjoyed this part of your tour, brought to you by the American Society of Civil Engineers. We will now join Mr. Peter G. Gosselin, staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, who has a fresh slant on the state of America as well as a keen appreciation of the absurd.

Everyone knows that America’s rich made out like bandits in the 1990s boom, leaving the working class behind. Mr. Gosselin has arranged a tour that will show us that the rich haven’t done so well after all.

You will see a fancy neighborhood in booming Atlanta where growth has overwhelmed the sewer system. Residents will pull their hair out when their nice suburb is flooded with raw waste and Do Not Enter signs are posted in their backyards. You will also see the most exclusive district of the nation’s capital, Georgetown, go dark when aging underground wires short out. But be careful. If you hit a pothole and crash, you’ll be lucky to find an emergency room no matter whether you own a Lincoln Town Car or a Honda Civic.

Whew.

There’s more. But we know you are in a hurry to get back to savoring daily life in this Greatest Nation on Earth.

One more thing: Readers, give yourself an A in U.S. history. No sooner had Wednesday’s column reached doorsteps than phones started ringing here. I was wrong to credit Rutherford B. Hayes as the last president (1877 to 1881) to wear a beard. White House photographs give that high honor to Benjamin Harrison, who left office in 1893. May I say, though, it heartens me that so many of our readers are completely with it, beard-wise. But please, no more requests to recognize Richard Nixon, whose intermittent beard was worn only hours at a time.