Reuters reported that long famous for its topnotch highways and passion for cars, the United States is letting bridges rust as traffic chokes overburdened roads, threatening a pillar of its economic strength.
A prime example of this neglect is the Brent Spence Bridge over the Ohio River. It worked well when it opened in 1963. Now it handles twice the traffic it was designed to support. Gridlock often stretches for a mile beneath a thick haze of smog.
Mr Margaret Drury, an engineer at United Parcel Service, said that "As you're coming across the bridge into Cincinnati you can tell when traffic has slowed because you can see the cloud."
Mr Drury said that UPS trucks avoid the bridge as much as possible but that adds time to its routes, pushing up costs. Two interstate highways come together at the river crossing, with a UPS distribution center to the north and the company's global air shipping hub to the south.
The bottleneck illustrates the decline of American infrastructure that is already hurting the US economy. The trend shows little sign of being reversed. The United States has fallen sharply in the World Economic Forum's ranking of national infrastructure systems. In the forum's 2007-08 report, American infrastructure was ranked 6th best in the world.
According to a copy of the rankings obtained by Reuters, the 2011-12 report due in September 2011 will show America at No 16, with South Korea overtaking the United States during 2010.
Mr Jonathan Turnbull MD at investment bank Lazard's infrastructure group in New York said that the quality of American roads is about on par with those of Malaysia. They lag Hong Kong, whose infrastructure tops the overall list. It's not just roads and bridges. The country's freight rail network and ports also strain to handle demand. American miners can pay four times what their Australian counterparts do to get coal to port and loaded on a ship.
That makes it harder to compete in the lucrative Chinese market and highlights the long term challenge America faces in boosting exports. The United States also lags Europe and many developing nations in measures of cell phone penetration.
According to a US government report from October, America spends roughly 2% of GDP on infrastructure, about half what it did 50 years ago. Europe spends around 5% and China 9%.
Lawmakers are currently discussing a bill to fund highway and rail spending over the next few years. A Senate aide said that "It's hard. There's not an appetite to increase the funding." Some Republican lawmakers are aiming to cut transportation spending.
Mr Stefan Spinosa, an engineer with the Ohio Department of Transportation, said that at the Ohio River, engineers are working on a project to build a new crossing that would replace the Brent Spence Bridge but don't have funding for construction.
The bridge's emergency lanes were painted over in the 1980s to make more room for traffic. In June, a man fell to his death after he ran out of gas and was hit by a car while pushing his Camaro over the bridge.
President Mr Barack Obama hopes an infrastructure push could create jobs and help him get reelected in 2012. He said that "America used to have the best stuff, best roads, best airports and best seaports. We're slipping behind."
(Sourced from Reuters)
