When did infrastructure become so popular among Democrats?

[Lyin' Steve]

"Fix our crumbling infrastructure" is one of Bernie's top five lines.  "Reasonable moderates" on the internet always list "fixing our infrastructure" in those presumptuous posts where they list of their positions.  Hillary keeps bringing it up.  It's all over the place all of a sudden.

Why the hell is this such a popular line?  Is it just because of Flint?  Does Bernie dream of being FDR and recreating the New Deal alphabet agencies?  I seriously don't get it.  Our roads and bridges are mostly fine, our electric grid and water/sewer systems are in mostly good condition, and the democrats have spent much of the last fifteen years allocating enormous block grants for monorails, railcars, and high-speed rail systems that keep getting rejected by state and metro governments.

[Blue3]

Our roads and bridges are mostly fine, our electric grid and water/sewer systems are in mostly good condition

No.

RI, the smallest state, alone has 230 structurally deficient bridges and 28 in imminent danger.
http://turnto10.com/archive/ridot-28-ri-bridges-are-in-critical-condition

Remember that bridge collapse in Minnesota?

And yes, there's the Flint water problem, which is not limited to Flint.

Our electric grid is aging and falling apart.


Go to almost any other major economic power in the world, and you marvel at their infrastructure. Here everything is falling apart, not maintained well and too old as it is.

[MaxQue]

Our roads and bridges are mostly fine, our electric grid and water/sewer systems are in mostly good condition

You are truly clueless.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Our infrastructure is a crumbling piece of sh**t.

[Classic Conservative]

Our infrastructure is a crumbling piece of sh**t.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Going from Trumps rhetoric, I wouldn't say this is unique to Democrats.

[senyor_brownbear]

Maybe because it's the only spending increase that can pass through a Republican congress.

[HAnnA MArin County]

Because it's an important issue that needs addressed, meanwhile Republicans are more concentrated on spending the taxpayers' dollars on far more important priorities like Benghazi and EmailGate hearings.

[Lyin' Steve]

So according to an Al Jazeera report from 2013, there were 600,000 bridges in the United States, 65,000 were structurally unsound, and 20,000 were "fracture critical."  Gosh that sounds really bad.  Except that there have barely been any bridge collapses in the last fifteen years and most of those were due to either flooding or human error.

2015, Virginia:  Covered bridge collapsed during flooding
2015, California:  Bridge collapsed during flash flood
2015, Pennsylvania:  Bridge collapsed because the contractors working on it didn't do their due diligence before a controlled demolition
2015, Ohio:  Bridge collapsed due to faulty demolition process
2013, Missouri:  Bridge collapsed because a runaway train crashed into it's support pillars
2013, Washington:  Bridge collapsed because an oversized truck crashed into it's girders
2012, Tennessee:  Bridge collapsed because a boat crashed into it
2009, California:  Bridge was repaired incorrectly and a critical component snapped
2009, Michigan:  Wikipedia just says "collapsed due to a tanker accident", no details, presumably that means a boat crashed into it.
2008, Iowa:  Bridge destroyed during flooding
2007, Washington:  Some idiot whose truck was more than five times over the weight limit ignored signs, drove onto bridge, collapsed immediately.
2007, Minnesota:  Collapse due to poor construction
2007, California:  Tanker crash caused a fire, melted steel beams, bridge collapsed.
2004, Colorado:  Girder collapsed during construction project accident
2004, Connecticut:  Car crash started a fire, melted bridge support.
2004, Connecticut:  Collapse due to faulty demolition
2003, Pennsylvania:  Bridge destroyed by tornado
2002, Oklahoma:  Barge crashed into bridge
2002, Texas:  Four barges crashed into bridge
2000, Wisconsin:  Bridge collapsed due to structural deficiencies

So looking all the way back to 2000, out of 600,000 bridges, and 20,000 that are apparently in immediate danger of collapse, there are only two collapses that can actually be attributed to something wrong with the bridge itself, and none since 2007, with everything else being unavoidable accidents or weather.

Meanwhile, in China, looking at the same list, there are tons of bridges collapsing every year due to overloading or structural deficiencies.

I stand by my claim that our roads and bridges are mostly fine and that it doesn't really make sense for this issue to be so hot right now in 2016.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

So looking all the way back to 2000, out of 600,000 bridges, and 20,000 that are apparently in immediate danger of collapse, there are only two collapses that can actually be attributed to something wrong with the bridge itself, and none since 2007, with everything else being unavoidable accidents or weather.

Please PM me your real name so I can make sure I never hire you for a mission critical job.

[Lyin' Steve]

So looking all the way back to 2000, out of 600,000 bridges, and 20,000 that are apparently in immediate danger of collapse, there are only two collapses that can actually be attributed to something wrong with the bridge itself, and none since 2007, with everything else being unavoidable accidents or weather.

Please PM me your real name so I can make sure I never hire you for a mission critical job.

It is easy to tell the people on this forum who have never had a real job.

In a field as complex, with as many people involved, and with as many unknown variables as bridge building, an 0.0003% failure rate over sixteen years isn't a damn emergency.

Please PM me your name to remind me never to hire you for a middle management role.  I can tell you're one of those managers who insists on absolutely zero issues rather than understanding probabilities, tradeoffs and practicalities... they usually don't last very long.

[Virginiá]

Isn't it looked at as part of a big jobs program? It makes sense, obviously. It's at least a better idea than more tax breaks for the wealthy.

Also, expanding infrastructure instead of just maintaining existing things would be good for the economy, assuming we don't build useless/wasteful crap. I'd really love much faster trains that go straight up and down the entire eastern seaboard. Not saying we should do all that now, but instead of arguing over just fixing stuff we already have, we should be planning new ambitious projects for the future.

But, you know, instead we are haggling over existing infrastructure.

Even the mass poisonings in Flint were less because of deficient infrastructure than it was because of poor, and totally unaccountable, governance. Flint's water system was adequate, at least in the sense of not poisoning people, until the appointed cabal that was running the city chose to change its water supply for the sake of saving a very, very small amount of money. It was their idiotic decisions that killed and sickened Flint's residents, not lack of infrastructure spending.

But wouldn't have that been prevented had we revamped the water system earlier? Many politicians seem to have the idea that we only have to build these things once and they'll somehow remain viable and safe forever.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

So looking all the way back to 2000, out of 600,000 bridges, and 20,000 that are apparently in immediate danger of collapse, there are only two collapses that can actually be attributed to something wrong with the bridge itself, and none since 2007, with everything else being unavoidable accidents or weather.

Please PM me your real name so I can make sure I never hire you for a mission critical job.

In a field as complex, with as many people involved, and with as many unknown variables as bridge building, an 0.0003% failure rate over sixteen years isn't a damn emergency.

I never used the word emergency.  Where I work we take care of mission critical stuff to avoid emergencies.

Please PM me your name to remind me never to hire you for a middle management role.  I can tell you're one of those managers who insists on absolutely zero issues rather than understanding probabilities, tradeoffs and practicalities... they usually don't last very long.

I'm sure your mommy and daddy are very proud of your job hiring middle managers but I went to school just so I wouldn't have to be a middle manager let alone work for someone with your attitude towards safety.

I don't know where this middle manager tangent is even coming from.  Where I have worked the bulk of the mission critical regulations came from the city, state, and federal government as well as multiple professional bodies and legal and compliance added their garnish to the whole affair.  Do you work at a petting zoo?  Middle managers at airlines are not the ones that set the FAA regulations for when and how planes get serviced.  Thank God.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/U-S-commercial-airlines-have-safest-decade-ever-2435203.php

I'm glad the FAA and the airlines take passenger safety a lot more seriously than Steve.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So in almost 15 years there hasn't been a single deadly crash involving one of the major US Airlines.  While Steve just shrugs and accepts that bridges are too complex and one falling every once in a while is totally okay the major US Airlines have taken a zero tolerance attitude to crashes while hurtling thousands of aluminum cans 7 miles above the earth's surface full of people... and providing dirt cheap prices at the same time.  Why would anyone in their right mind argue against this?

Steel prices hit a record low in December 2015.  Why, oh why, would someone argue against picking up some dirt cheap steel and preventing a catastrophe?

I was just shocked by this thread because in all my professional jobs we over trained and serviced things aggressively.

[Lyin' Steve]

They have a zero tolerance attitude but plane crashes still happen.  They don't freak out and overcompensate because two crashes happened since 2000 or whatever... they just constantly strive for excellence within reason

[Taco Truck 🚚]

They have a zero tolerance attitude but plane crashes still happen.

I don't know if this is a reading comprehension issue or a weak ass internet forum tactic for someone with egg on their face.  Let me repeat.  There have been ZERO deadly airplane crashes in the United States involving the major US airlines in the last 15 years.  They have a zero tolerance policy and they have ZERO deadly crashes.  Let me know if this needs to be written in crayon so some people can comprehend it.  Oh, and ticket prices on an inflation adjusted basis remain dirt cheap.



There simply is no excuse for major bridges to collapse in a first world country due to lack of maintenance.  And nowhere where I have ever worked could someone say that is okay and keep their job.

[Lyin' Steve]

They have a zero tolerance attitude but plane crashes still happen.

I don't know if this is a reading comprehension issue or a weak ass internet forum tactic for someone with egg on their face.  Let me repeat.  There have been ZERO deadly airplane crashes in the United States involving the major US airlines in the last 15 years.  They have a zero tolerance policy and they have ZERO deadly crashes.  Let me know if this needs to be written in crayon so some people can comprehend it.  Oh, and ticket prices on an inflation adjusted basis remain dirt cheap.



There simply is no excuse for major bridges to collapse in a first world country due to lack of maintenance.  And nowhere where I have ever worked could someone say that is okay and keep their job.

You should always strive for perfection.
But it's not the emergency of the century.
The two poor-construction-related bridge collapses this century are certainly not one of the top five most important problems in our country.
Even you, if you made your list based on what you claim in all the other threads, would probably agree.

[Badger]

The issue isn't whether or not bridges and the like deteriorate to the point of collapse and casualties. Long before a bridge degrades to that extreme, there are lesser, but still serious economic and safety impacts from deteriorating infrastructure. I remember reading in the early eighties how a single bridge in Pittsburgh cost us Steel over 1 million dollars a year in everything from time lost due to rerouting two broken axles. 1 Bridge, one company, over a million dollars a year over 30 years ago. This should give an idea just how big of an economic impact the deterioration of Bridges Road have on the economy long before we get to the extreme of death from collapse. This is not including less reported but still numerous deaths and injuries caused by poor road conditions.

This isn't rocket science folks. Fundamental basis of economic growth is having a strong Transportation infrastructure. Hell, even the Romans understood this. Even today it is a major reason many third world countries can't economically developed. Point is we shouldn't have to wait until people are literally dying from bridge collapses or our road system deteriorates to being on par with Nigeria's before we wake up and realize the weekend infrastructure has very very serious consequences to our national economy. And we are already at that point.

I would love to have a rational discussion in Congress on this subject without the ubiquitous constant recitation of the buzz raise pork barrel politics. Sure, there's bound to be so that thrown in, but that is no reason to allow a full-scale further degradation of our infrastructure to continue.

The bigger question I have is when did infrastructure become so unpopular with Republicans? I suspect it'll become in Vogue again for my party as soon as we eventually get the White House back

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

There's also the issue that deferred maintenance ends up costing more in the long run, but yet tends to be one of those things axed from transportation budgets in lean years and difficult to get put back in when the money becomes available again in the overall budget.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

They have a zero tolerance attitude but plane crashes still happen.

There have been ZERO deadly airplane crashes in the United States involving the major US airlines in the last 15 years.  They have a zero tolerance policy and they have ZERO deadly crashes.

You should always strive for perfection.

The major US airlines are not striving for perfection.  They achieved it 15 years ago.  I know the ancient Babylonians did not have the concept of zero but really I would think even people in America with relatively poor educations would understand zero.

But it's not the emergency of the century.

When you are done arguing with your pet strawman please rejoin us in this thread.  No one in this thread said it was the emergency of the century.  And if you reread my post and comprehend it I specifically said you do basic maintenance to avoid emergencies.  The levy system in New Orleans had a much better track record than thousands of structures, companies, and industries... until it didn't.

Steve, when I started debating you I honestly thought I was missing something and you were going to reveal to us some special knowledge that we weren't privy to.  But my first assumption I posted seems correct.  You just don't know how maintenance of mission critical systems works.  As far as my relatively short career is concerned the infrastructure situation in this country is an aberration.  Letting stuff go so long without basic maintenance when labor, raw materials, and funding are so cheap is unheard of.

[Virginiá]

A strange world, it would be, in which an incredibly wealthy nation were restricted to these and only these two options.

It doesn't have to be that way, but they are big ones. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what big job ideas Republicans are really pushing besides supply side tax-based proposals. Basing a party's agenda around drowning govt in a bathtub generally doesn't leave one with a ton of options.

"Good for the economy" does not necessarily equate to "good for human beings."

This came off as a bit ambiguous to me - What do you mean? Are you saying infrastructure investment might be bad for human beings?

Which, I am very sorry to note, we cannot safely assume. This is precisely where the political conversation ought to be focused: How do we allocate infrastructure spending more intelligently, more fairly, more sustainably?

Yes, I agree. I'd be willing to bet that cutting waste and abuse from such large programs would bring the price down noticeably. Same idea applies to defense spending, if not more so.

"Existing infrastructure" is what we actually rely on, which seems rather important. Worth at least a bit of haggling, don't you think? There is no shortage of ambitious long-term plans in politics and policy, if that is what you are after. Not that they do much good for any of us...

Well my point was that we shouldn't be so far behind on this issue that our entire fight is over just maintaining our existing infrastructure. That's a big failure of our government right there. Maintaining what we have shouldn't even be up for debate when we can actually address the issue, yet somehow we're actually fighting for years and years on whether to spend money to prevent bridges from collapsing or water systems from poisoning us. It's ridiculous.

In fact, it would be extremely unusual for a city - however prosperous or powerful - to replace its entire water or sewer system in a single, simultaneous, planned event. Most large infrastructure projects are constructed and then replaced piecemeal, evolving into something a bit like Theseus' ship over centuries of urban development. This is, generally speaking, how resilient, sustainable systems come into being. Large, single-shot projects are difficult to fund and lack feedback mechanisms that would allow their builders to recognize the system's flaws, adjust to changing conditions, or address changing needs.

Ideally, it shouldn't be all at once given the reasons you stated. The fact that they are in a position where it has to be is once again an indictment of our representatives and government that it has come to this.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

There's a bridge near my house whose westbound lane has been blocked off for ages. It hasn't been usable for at least two years. I'm not even sure what's wrong with it, just that it's blocked off and I've never seen any kind of work being done on it at all. The town installed a traffic light on the remaining lane of the bridge rather than work on fixing it.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

There's a bridge near my house whose westbound lane has been blocked off for ages. It hasn't been usable for at least two years. I'm not even sure what's wrong with it, just that it's blocked off and I've never seen any kind of work being done on it at all. The town installed a traffic light on the remaining lane of the bridge rather than work on fixing it.

As has been pointed out, bridges can be expensive. If existing traffic flows aren't sufficient to justify building a replacement, they may well be doing the smart thing in making optimum use of the one lane while it's still available.

[Rules for me, but not for thee]

John Oliver really pushed this on his HBO show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpzvaqypav8

[Badger]

The issue isn't whether or not bridges and the like deteriorate to the point of collapse and casualties.  ce folks.

Of course it isn't, but we tend to talk about it because it is a popular talking point for people who want more infrastructure spending. Either way, literally failing bridges are exceptional and don't tell us much about the condition of most roads and highways in this country.

With regard to maintenance costs, $1M is really not that much to maintain a bridge, even in inflation-adjusted terms. Bridges tend to be super expensive. What should we have been spending on it per year, and what would a comparison to the cost of building and maintaining a new bridge distributed over its likely useful life look like?

By the way, it is very much not the case that the marginal dollar spent on highway or road construction or maintenance necessarily has any kind of GDP multiplier effect. This shouldn't be surprising; almost all forms of public spending suffer from diminishing returns. As we already have one of the best highway systems in the world, with more miles of road per driver, more miles travelled per capita, and more registered vehicles per adult than almost all other countries, perhaps there are other priorities that deserve or focus. (We also have much higher rates of traffic fatalities, but most of this is explained by higher miles travelled and most of the remainder is attributable to higher rates of intoxication and lower seatbelt use compared to our peer countries.)

Also, I can't help asking, was the irony in pivoting directly from comparing our roads to Nigeria's to pleading for a "rational discussion" intentional?

I think you're missing the point about the Pittsburgh bridge I mentioned. It wasn't $1 mil a year spent to maintain that bridge; it was $1 mil a year (in early 80's dollars) in lost revenue that decay of the bridge cost a single company every year. One of the largest companies in the region at the time to be sure, but when you factor in every large, medium, and small business losing revenue every year because of it's deteriorated state, I damn well guarantee you the cost of upgrading the bridge would've had a net economic boon far far outstripping it's cost.

That's the situation we're in now. Yes, Av, we still have at least one of the best transportation infrastructure systems in the world, but that's one of the reasons we have the strongest economy in the world. However, we are undeniably pissing away that infrastructural economic advantage as the number of roads and bridges reaching classified levels of "crappy" and "even worse" reaches post-war highs. And it's all due to political intransigence much more than any realistic assessment of our national infrastructure needs.

Nigeria was my random choice among any third world country. A bit of hyperbole perhaps, but when folks like Steve McQueen argue that the number of people killed by collapsing un-repaired bridges isn't TOO bad right now, it was hardly an over-the-top comparison.

[RINO Tom]

They have a zero tolerance attitude but plane crashes still happen.  They don't freak out and overcompensate because two crashes happened since 2000 or whatever... they just constantly strive for excellence within reason

You need to acquaint yourself with some Six Sigma, son!