Civics Tuesday! Crashed Bridge!? What’s “Infrastructure?”
Plain language civics for busy people.
News today in the USA shows pictures of a bridge collapsing as a container ship hit the supports. In June of 2023, a truck carrying gasoline hit a bridge support for a major highway in Pennsylvania, and the gasoline caught fire and burned the concrete bridge, causing its collapse. In February of 2023, a train carrying flammable chemicals derailed in Ohio. Those are only a few of the many crises created by disrepair and neglect of public infrastructure - much of which was built just post world war 2.
Scenes like this are dramatic, with flames and huge structures suddenly giving way, falling, or piling up like train cars, trucks and cars on roadways. The massive, dramatic changes and huge pile-ups show just how important roads, bridges, railways, dams, river-ways, air traffic, and buildings are to the people who use them.
“Economists argue that robust investment in infrastructure in the twentieth century set the foundation for the nation’s strong growth in the aftermath of World War II. But its crucial role also means that poor infrastructure can impose large costs on the U.S. economy. In addition to the threat to human safety of catastrophic failures such as bridge collapses or dam breaches, inadequately maintained roads, trains, and waterways cost billions of dollars in lost economic productivity.
A 2018 study by transportation analytics firm Inrix found that delays caused by traffic congestion alone cost the economy over $87 billion that year. Airports are another linchpin: U.S. civil aviation directly supports 2.5 million U.S. jobs, and international tourism brings in up to $180 billion dollars in annual tax revenue. However, flight delays cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year, including $33 billion [PDF] in 2019, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.” Council on Foreign Relations
“Infra- means "below;" so the infrastructure is the "underlying structure" of a country and its economy, the fixed installations that it needs in order to function. These include roads, bridges, dams, the water and sewer systems, railways and subways, airports, and harbors. These are generally government-built and publicly owned.” Merriam-Webster
“Infrastructure” was used in France in the 1800s, more to describe things which were already built, and was similar to the phrase, “public works.” In the 1940s, military and NATO officials began using the term, especially to describe railways. By the mid 1970s Infrastructure was being used more commonly than Public Works.
“The $25 trillion U.S. economy relies on a vast network of infrastructure to keep it afloat. But the systems currently in place, including roads, railways, electrical grids, and internet providers, were built decades ago and are struggling to keep pace. Economists say that delays and rising maintenance costs are holding economic performance back, and civil engineers warn that structurally deficient bridges and antiquated water infrastructure pose safety risks. Meanwhile, the United States lags behind other advanced economies in infrastructure quality and spending.” Council on Foreign Relations
When people buy for their homes and families or their businesses buy or sell, they use infrastructure for moving goods, services, energy, information, food, and water. The bare basics of any society include common-use resources like roads, bridges, waterways, and also the common support of those resources. The Baltimore harbor is one of the busiest places in the United States for any kind of shipping, with over 750,000 cars in 2023 - more cars and cart parts than any other US port. Modern ships are twice as large as those in use when the bridge was built in 1970.
In Baltimore, the bridge was damaged so greatly that it couldn’t stay together, and it became a disaster. Accidents can be much worse when several problems combine. In this case, there was only one major bridge carrying thousands of vehicles per day over one major shipping port with brings thousands of ships and hundreds of thousands of shipping containers. The highway and the bridge are gone. There are many ships trapped in the harbor. A handful of people died because of the failures, and thousands of others will feel the results of this disaster soon.
It might seem like a small inconvenience for a customer to wait for a car or a part, as the damaged bridge is cleared out, and all the ships trapped in the harbor can leave with cargo. For one person, the delay might be small, but most delays are part of a chain of events, and can cause a lot of trouble for small and large businesses, even life-threatening if there are medical or safety supplies that get delayed.
I have a personal example of a shipment of windows for my porch, delayed first by the Russian war on Ukraine causing a shortage of aluminum for a manufacturer. The second delay was caused by a train derailment in Ohio at a place that is a pinch-point in rail shipping. My porch wasn’t a crisis, but the other windows in the same container were for an apartment and had renters waiting to move in after the windows arrived. Those renters couldn’t leave their current home before the windows were installed. The builder for both projects couldn’t finish the work or get paid or pay his workers until the windows were installed, and the next projects were delayed as well.
Abraham Lincoln and other insightful leaders in the United States saw wisdom in working as a society, building and maintaining public infrastructure to support everyone’s lives with interconnected communities, families, and commerce.
Infrastructure is what supports us, as individuals and as a society. It’s foundational, fundamental, and at the base, it’s about people.
References:
Council on Foreign Relations - State of US Infrastructure
Governing.com - history of the word “infrastructure”
Abraham Lincoln - history and public infrastructure
Guardian - about the Baltimore Bridge
This article is yet another opportunity to point out that our collective taxes pay for infrastructure. We have a bad habit of considering taxes as money being stolen from us instead of paying our share of the maintenance costs for our infrastructure. Yes! Every earner individual or corporate should pay its fair share. Yes! Those who have more should pay more! But we all need these things and they must be maintained with as much care as we give our personal needs. That takes money.