The nation’s roads, bridges, levees, schools, water supply and other infrastructure are in such bad shape that it would take $2.2 trillion over five years to bring them up to speed. But even that huge chunk of change would only raise their grade from a “D” average to a “B,” according to the latest “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” released today by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
“We’ve been operating on a patch-and-pray system,” says ASCE President D. Wayne Klotz. That is, patch something and pray that it holds up—instead of providing regular improvements for aging facilities.
Like a car, he notes, if you keep skipping oil changes and ignoring the funny clanking noise, it’s going to be a lot more expensive to fix the major problems happen down the proverbial road. In fact, the current estimate of $2.2 trillion is 70 percent more than the $1.8 trillion the ASCE estimated it would cost to bring the U.S. infrastructure up to par four years ago. And the D grade has remained the same.
“It’s the kind of report card you would have expected on the eve of the collapse of the Roman Empire,” says Stephen Flynn, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank in New York. “It’s not the kind of grade you want to bring home to Mom.”
Flynn says a major problem is that we take the infrastructure for granted, which makes it difficult to generate awareness until there’s a major event, such as the 2007 fatal bridge collapse in Minneapolis or levee failures during deadly Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“There’s no sex appeal to invest in it, so we don’t,” he says.
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