Bridges to Nowhere - Our Infrastructure

Watching C-span - the Senate today, discussing the infrastructure was like diving into a pothole. When I was traveling back and forth from my new home base - to my old home base (in excess of 500 miles each way) - I took advice from a friend and... took an alternate route through the NYC area. Doing so - after doing my usual dyslexic wrong way on one expressway (delaying me well over one hour) - I crossed the Verrazano Narrows bridge for the first time in say twenty years.

I am still here. My car is still in one piece. But...crossing just at dusk after my 20+ miles in the wrong direction on that other expressway...I was faced with lurching towards the bridge siderails without pause for thought - to avoid being side-swiped by a car - swerving to avoid the potholes!! (craters!!) on the bridge. You would only "know" about these potholes if you crossed the bridge regularly... I did try and research my routes before the trips to avoid detours, construction, or major road failures (there is no one site that provides these kinds of information).

Sadly this is only one example of the state of everything - bridges, highways, school buildings. The list is endless and the neglect decades in the making. We surely have jobs for many people - skilled and unskilled - to bring everything back up to standard or code in these areas - as well as huge opportunities in all the environmentally friendly energy industries to get on a right path with our transport modes. **Caveat here - without any further building or use of nuclear power please... we have no space for any more spent plutonium: the safety and condition of all our plants also being a part of, our deteriorated infrastructure (duh?).

However - how are we going to get back to the right paths with fiscal bankruptcy looming large. And we have a bridge to nowhere veep candidate who believes everyone should produce more children. I am worn out. Anyone else feel the same?

http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=103