Report Card for America’s Infrastructure

Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream
by Arianna Huffington
Published 7 Sep 2010

PART 3: AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL DILAPIDATED 1 George Washington knew that: Robert Fishman, “Beyond Motor City, 1808–1908–2008: National Planning for America,” 23 Jan. 2010, www.america2050.org. 2 The nation’s overall infrastructure grade: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, www.infrastructurereportcard.org. 3 downward trend since 2005: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2005 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, www.asce.org. 4 “It’s the kind of report card you …”: Katherine Harmon, “U.S. Infrastructure Crumbling,” 28 Jan. 2009, www.scientificamerican.com. 5 According to the ASCE: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, www.infrastructurereportcard.org. 6 But we’ve only budgeted $975 billion: Ibid. 7 America’s population is expected to reach: Jeffrey Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “Immigration to Play Lead Role in Future U.S.

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2 Aug. 2007, http://minnesota.publicradio.org. 73 On March 16, 2006, the Ka Loko Dam in Kilauea, Hawaii: Craig Gima, “Ka Loko Settlement Is Reached,” 30 Oct. 2009, www.starbulletin.com. 74 The breach created an ecological disaster: Diane Leone, “State Keeps Eye on Dams,” 16 Mar. 2006, www.starbulletin.com. 75 According to Hawaii congresswoman Mazie Hirono, it was not: Joint Hearing on National Levee and Dam Safety Programs, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 8 May 2007. 76 There are more than 85,000 dams in America: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, www.infrastructurereportcard.org. 77 It would take $12.5 billion over the next five years: Ibid. 78 Plus, of our 85,000 dams, the federal government regulates: Ibid. 79 In 2007, during congressional testimony: Joint Hearing on National Levee and Dam Safety Programs, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 8 May 2007. 80 Like any number of agencies charged with protecting: Harry Shearer, “Fixing the Responder, Ignoring the Cause,” 25 Nov. 2008, www.huffingtonpost.com. 81 Instead of fulfilling its responsibility to build: Harry Shearer, “New Orleans: Where Accountability Failed, Liability Follows,” 19 Nov. 2009, www.huffingtonpost.com. 82 The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, infrastructurereportcard.org. 83 Over the next ten years, there will be a five-hundredfold: “Fixing America’s Crumbling Infrastructure,” Free Enterprise: News and Views from the U.S.

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2 Aug. 2007, http://minnesota.publicradio.org. 73 On March 16, 2006, the Ka Loko Dam in Kilauea, Hawaii: Craig Gima, “Ka Loko Settlement Is Reached,” 30 Oct. 2009, www.starbulletin.com. 74 The breach created an ecological disaster: Diane Leone, “State Keeps Eye on Dams,” 16 Mar. 2006, www.starbulletin.com. 75 According to Hawaii congresswoman Mazie Hirono, it was not: Joint Hearing on National Levee and Dam Safety Programs, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 8 May 2007. 76 There are more than 85,000 dams in America: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, www.infrastructurereportcard.org. 77 It would take $12.5 billion over the next five years: Ibid. 78 Plus, of our 85,000 dams, the federal government regulates: Ibid. 79 In 2007, during congressional testimony: Joint Hearing on National Levee and Dam Safety Programs, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 8 May 2007. 80 Like any number of agencies charged with protecting: Harry Shearer, “Fixing the Responder, Ignoring the Cause,” 25 Nov. 2008, www.huffingtonpost.com. 81 Instead of fulfilling its responsibility to build: Harry Shearer, “New Orleans: Where Accountability Failed, Liability Follows,” 19 Nov. 2009, www.huffingtonpost.com. 82 The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, infrastructurereportcard.org. 83 Over the next ten years, there will be a five-hundredfold: “Fixing America’s Crumbling Infrastructure,” Free Enterprise: News and Views from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Jul. 2008, www.uschambermagazine.com. 84 Federal Communications Commission chair Julius Genachowski explains: “National Broadband Plan: Consumer Survey Results Are In,” 23 Feb. 2010, www.brookings.edu. 85 In a study of 120 countries, researchers found: Iain Morris, “Resilience Amid Turmoil: Benchmarking IT Industry Competitiveness 2009,” Sept. 2009, www.economist.com. 86 Even a farmer these days needs high-speed Internet: “National Broadband Plan: Consumer Survey Results Are In,” 23 Feb. 2010, www.brookings.edu. 87 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth among: Jerome Cukier, “Internet Penetration—Who’s Online?”

American Made: Why Making Things Will Return Us to Greatness
by Dan Dimicco
Published 3 Mar 2015

Gerry Smith, “Internet Speed in United States Lags behind Many Countries, Highlighting Global Digital Divide,” Huffington Post, September 10, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/05/internet-speed-united-states-digital-divide_n_1855054.html. 14. “2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” American Society of Civil Engineers, March 19, 2013, http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/. 15. “Failure to Act: The Impact of Current Infrastructure Investment on America’s Economic Future,” American Society of Civil Engineers, January 15, 2013, http://www.asce.org/uploadedFiles/Infrastructure/Failure_to_Act/Failure_to_Act_Report.pdf. 16. “2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” American Society of Civil Engineers, March 19, 2013, http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/. 17.

The Centrist Manifesto
by Charles Wheelan
Published 18 Apr 2013

Notes 1 New York Times exit polls for 2012 elections, http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/president/exit-polls (accessed January 2, 2013). 2 Thomas Friedman, “The Tea Kettle Movement,” New York Times, September 29, 2010. 3 Organisation for Economic Co-operation, “OECD Health Data 2012—Frequently Requested Data,” http://www.oecd.org/els/healthpoliciesanddata/oecdhealthdata2012-frequentlyrequesteddata.htm (accessed January 2, 2013). 4 American Society of Civil Engineers, “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure: 2009 Grades,” http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/ (accessed January 2, 2013). 5 “Life in the Slow Lane,” Economist, April 30, 2011. 6 Tamar Lewin, “Once a Leader, U.S. Now Lags in College Degrees,” New York Times, July 23, 2010. 7 Charles M. Blow, “The G.O.P.’s Abandoned Babies,” New York Times, February 26, 2011. 8 Peter G.

Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People
by Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein
Published 14 Nov 2013

References Akerlof, George, William Dickens, and William Perry. 1996. “The Macroeconomics of Low Inflation.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Vol. 1996, No. 1, pp. 1-76. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2534646?uid=3739584&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101919624531 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). 2013. “2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.” http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/home Anderson, Palle and David Gruen. 1995. “Macroeconomic Policies and Growth.” Research Discussion Paper 9507. Sydney: Reserve Bank of Australia. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.200.1174&rep=rep1&type=pdf Appelbaum, Eileen, Thomas Bailey, Peter Berg, and Arne Kalleberg. 2000.

Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions
by Temple Grandin, Ph.d.
Published 11 Oct 2022

There’s that phrase again. Earlier in this book, we looked at what happened when outages in California left people without power and sparked fires. I would prefer to call “deferred maintenance” what it is: infrequent maintenance, or sometimes no maintenance. According to the 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, of the 617,000 bridges across the country, 7.5 percent are considered structurally deficient and 42 percent are as old as the Fern Hollow Bridge, which, almost fifty years old, was not built for that longevity. There is hopeful news: bridge engineers have been developing all kinds of cool materials, such as high-performance concrete and steel, corrosion-resistant reinforcements, and improved coatings.

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A Review of General Anesthesia in Different Animal Models.” Consciousness and Cognition (2016). doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2016.06.017. Zentall, T. “Jealousy, Competition, or a Contextual Cue for Reward?” Animal Sentience 22, no. 4 (2018). AFTERWORD American Society of Civil Engineers. Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, 2021. https://infrastructurereportcard.org/catitem/bridges. Associated Press. “Review Slated for 5 Bridges Sharing Design of Collapsed Span.” February 2, 2022. Robertson, C., and S. Kasakove. “Pittsburgh Bridge Collapses Hours before Biden Infrastructure Visit.” New York Times, January 28, 2022.

Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy
by Robert H. Frank
Published 31 Mar 2016

Gromet, Kimberly A. Hartson, and David K. Sherman, “The Politics of Luck: Political Ideology and the Perceived Relationship between Luck and Success,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 59 (2015): 40–46. CHAPTER 6: THE BURDEN OF FALSE BELIEFS 1. American Society of Civil Engineers, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, 2013, http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org. 2. Donna M. Desrochers and Steven Hurlburt, “Trends in College Spending: 2001–2011; A Delta Data Update,” Delta Cost Project: American Institutes for Research, 2014, www.deltacostproject.org/sites/default/files/products/Delta%20Cost_Trends%20College%20Spending%202001–2011_071414_rev.pdf. 3.

Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probability and Statistics on Everything You Do
by Kaiser Fung
Published 25 Jan 2010

Downs put forth the provocative thesis that congestion itself is the market’s solution to a problem of mismatched supply and demand. National statistics on commuting were taken from Elisabeth Eaves’s article “America’s Worst Commutes,” published in Forbes. The American Society of Civil Engineers issues an annual Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which measures road congestion in all fifty states. The engineering community has only recently recognized the importance of managing the reliability (variability) of trip time; see Richard Margiotta’s presentation to the National Transportation Operations Coalition, available online, for the state of the art.

The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream
by Christopher B. Leinberger
Published 15 Nov 2008

Go to http://www.cabq.gov/council/impactfees.html for information about the City of Albuquerque impact fee system, which passed in 2003. The author served on the impact fee advisory panel, and the studies backing up the impact fee legislation justified fees that were twice as high as those implemented. 53. American Society of Civil Engineers, “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/. 54. Congressional Research Service, Report for Congress, “Energy: Selected Facts and Numbers,” November 29, 2006, http://ncseonline.org/NLE/ CRSreports/06Dec/RL31849.pdf. 55. Testimony of Congressman Roscoe Bartlett before Congress on February 8, 2006, http://www.peakoil.net/Publications/PeakOilSpclOrder%2 315TextCharts020806Low.pdf.

The New Class Conflict
by Joel Kotkin
Published 31 Aug 2014

Bret Swanson, “Zero GDP Reading Exposes the Real Deficit—Economic Growth,” Maximum Entropy, February 1, 2013, http://www.bretswanson.com/index.php/2013/02/zero-gdp-reading-exposes-the-real-deficit-%E2%80%93-economic-growth. 59. Walter Russell Mead et al., “The Blue Model Needs Wall Street to Survive,” American Interest, October 25, 2013, http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2013/10/25/the-blue-model-needs-wall-street-to-survive. 60. American Society of Civil Engineers, “2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org. 61. Carl DeMaio, “Revoking the Federal Free Pass on Pensions,” Wall Street Journal, February 6, 2013; U.S. Department of the Treasury, “A New Economic Analysis of Infrastructure Investment,” report, March 23, 2012, http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/economic-policy/Documents/20120323InfrastructureReport.pdf. 62.

A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies
by Matt Simon
Published 24 Jun 2022

“Occurrence, Identification and Removal of Microplastic Particles and Fibers in Conventional Activated Sludge Process and Advanced MBR Technology.” Water Research 133:236–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2018 .01.049. Simon, Matt. 2021. “People Should Drink Way More Recycled Wastewater.” Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/people-should-drink-way -more-recycled-wastewater/. American Society of Civil Engineers. 2021. “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure: Wastewater.” https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat -item/wastewater/. Packard, Vance. 2011. The Waste Makers. New York: Ig Publishing. REI. 2022. “What Is Organically Grown Cotton?” https://www.rei .com/learn/expert-advice/organically-grown-cotton.html. Al Jazeera. 2021. “Chile’s Desert Dumping Ground for Fast Fashion Leftovers.” https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/11/8/chiles-desert -dumping-ground-for-fast-fashion-leftovers.

No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends
by Richard Dobbs and James Manyika
Published 12 May 2015

Since the 1970s, global investment as a share of GDP fell from 26.1 percent to a recent low of 20.8 percent in 2002. Total global investment from 1980 through 2008 averaged $700 billion per year less than it would have been had the investment rate of the 1970s persisted—a cumulative sum of $20 trillion. 24. 2013 report card for America’s infrastructure, American Society of Civil Engineers, www.infrastructurereportcard.org. 25. Dobbs et al., Infrastructure productivity. 26. Ibid. 27. Dobbs et al., Farewell to cheap capital? 28. Benedict Clements, Victoria Perry, and Juan Toro, From stimulus to consolidation: Revenue and expenditure policies in advanced and emerging economies, IMF, departmental paper no. 10/3, October 6, 2010, www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/dp/2010/dp1003.pdf. 29.

The Impulse Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification
by Paul Roberts
Published 1 Sep 2014

Chris Myers, “Conservatism and Campaign Finance Reform: The Two Aren’t Mutually Exclusive,” RedState, April 24, 2012, http://www.redstate.com/clmyers/2013/04/24/conservatism-and-campaign-finance-reform/. 24. David Brooks, “The Opportunity Coalition,” The New York Times, Jan 30, 2014. 25. “2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” American Society of Civil Engineers, http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/. 26. In Robert Frank, The Darmn Economy: Liberty, Competition, and Common Good. 27. Brooks, “The Opportunity Coalition.” Footnotes Chapter 1 * Traffic fatalities in the 1920s were about seventeen times higher, per mile traveled, than today

Scarcity: The True Cost of Not Having Enough
by Sendhil Mullainathan
Published 3 Sep 2014

Jaikumar, Firefighting by Knowledge Workers (Information Storage Industry Center, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, 2000), retrieved from http://isic.ucsd.edu/pdf/firefighting.pdf. Steven Covey finds it helpful to classify tasks: S. R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Free Press, 2004). approximately one in four rural bridges: Bridges—Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, retrieved from http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/fact-sheet/bridges. scarcity makes this problem a whole lot worse: There are many studies of the planning fallacy. Good reviews are: Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin, and Michael Ross, “Inside the Planning Fallacy: The Causes and Consequences of Optimistic Time Predictions,” in Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, ed.

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Published 20 Jan 2014

Office of Science and Technology Policy, March 2012, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/competes_report_on_prizes_final.pdf (accessed September 18, 2013). 22. For a detailed list, see the appendix of McKinsey and Company, “And the Winner Is . . . ” Research Report, 2009, http://mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Social-Innovation/And_the_winner_is.pdf (accessed September 18, 2013). 23. “2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” ASCE, 2013, http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/home (accessed August 12, 2013). 24. See Matthew Yglesias, “The Collapse of Public Investment,” Moneybox blog, Slate, May 7, 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/07/public_sector_investment_collapse.html (accessed August 12, 2013); and the underlying data at “Real State & Local Consumption Expenditures & Gross Investment, 3 Decimal,” Economic Research—Federal Reserve Bank of St.

The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters
by Rose George
Published 13 Oct 2008

Sewerage undertakers House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, Out of Sight—Not Out of Mind, Ev. 2. Bonuses totaling £1.26 million Martin Horwood MP, Parliamentary Debates, Westminster Hall, June 27, 2006. One of the most unpleasant events House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, “Out of Sight—Not Out of Mind,” Ev. 2. D minus American Society for Civil Engineers, “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure 2005,” http://www.asce.org/reportcard. Crumbling, dangerous sewer pipes NRDC, “Swimming in Sewage,” p. 23. 2,175 Olympic-sized swimming pools David Hsu, “Sustainable New York City” (New York: Design Trust for Public Space and New York City Office for Environmental Coordination, 2006), p. 21. 1.46 trillion gallons U.S.

That Used to Be Us
by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum
Published 1 Sep 2011

(China, by contrast, is the People’s Republic of Deferred Gratification.) In the Terrible Twos, our roads got more crowded, our bridges got creakier, our water systems got leakier, and the lines in our airports got longer. In 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued a Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, and gave America an overall grade of D. The report also gave individual grades to fifteen infrastructure categories. None got higher than C+. “Decades of underfunding and inattention have endangered the nation’s infrastructure,” the engineers said, adding that since the ASCE’s last report card in 2005, there has been little change in the condition of America’s roads, bridges, drinking-water systems, and other public works, but the cost of repairing them (when they do get repaired) has risen.

Your Computer Is on Fire
by Thomas S. Mullaney , Benjamin Peters , Mar Hicks and Kavita Philip
Published 9 Mar 2021

Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel, “Hail the Maintainers: Capitalism Excels at Innovation but Is Failing at Maintenance, and for Most Lives It Is Maintenance That Matters More” (April 7, 2016), https://aeon.co/essays/innovation-is-overvalued-maintenance-often-matters-more. 7. Bowker and Star, Sorting Things Out. 8. American Society of Civil Engineers, “2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” (2014), accessed February 1, 2019, http://2013.infrastructurereportcard.org/. 9. Ingo Braun, “Geflügelte Saurier: Zur Intersystemische Vernetzung Grosser Technische Netze,” in Technik Ohne Grenzen, ed. Ingo Braun and Bernward Joerges (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994). 10.

The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century
by Alex Prud'Homme
Published 6 Jun 2011

CHAPTER 11: WATER SCARCITY 107 Tunnel No. 3: New York City Department of Environmental Protection: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/factsheet.pdf and http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/ dep_projects/cp_city_water_tunnel3.shtml. 107 Ted Dowey: Author’s tour of Tunnel No. 3 with Ted Dowey, March 5, 2007. 119 The American Society of Civil Engineers: “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” American Society of Civil Engineers: http://apps.asce.org/reportcard/2009/grades.cfm. 120 In 2007, 159 leaks: Anthony DePalma, “Mysterious Leak Provides Hint of Lost Manhattan,” New York Times, February 5, 2008. 120 The EPA estimates that 1 trillion gallons: US Environmental Protection Agency, Water Sense, “The Facts on Leaks,” http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/pubs/fixleak.html. 120 the water pressure inside: From David Grann’s indispensable article on Tunnel No. 3, “City of Water,” New Yorker, September 1, 2003. 122 Standard pay is $35 to $38 an hour: Ibid. 122 Hogs have their own language: Ibid., and Dowey interview.

Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
by Vaclav Smil
Published 23 Sep 2019

In: The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors, Princeton University Press, pp. 609–626. Asao, S., et al. 2015. Variation in foliar respiration and wood CO2 efflux rates among species and canopy layers in a wet tropical forest. Tree Physiology 35:148–159. ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers). 2017. 2017 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/2017-Infrastructure-Report-Card.pdf. Ashby, T. 1935. The Aqueducts of Ancient Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers). 1980. The Pioneer Zephyr. https://www.asme.org/wwwasmeorg/media/ResourceFiles/AboutASME/Who%20We%20Are/Engineering%20History/Landmarks/58-Pioneer-Zephyr-1934.pdf.