Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

This great nation and our great economy was built by our highway interstate system. America is what she is today because of highways and trucks. Anything can be made or grown anywhere and delivered anywhere because of interstates and trucking.

How could this happen to something this country depends on so heavily?

Now that people have died in the latest bridge collapse, the news is filled with stories of how our entire infrastructure is deteriorating. Not only bridges, but levees in New Orleans, and even Sacramento. Dams and waterways are also in dire need of repairs.

Bridge collapse spotlights America’s deferred maintenance
State inspection officials had inspected the bridge twice since the federal government rated the bridge “structurally deficient” but concluded the bridge was safe. State officials were in the process of completing a third inspection – interrupted because of construction on the bridge – when the bridge collapsed Wednesday afternoon at the height of rush hour.

Roads and bridges are bad enough already. If they start falling apart, ferries will be back in style and any trip cross country will take forever.

Conspiracy Theory starts here

Now, I’m the first to jump onboard any conspiracy involving corporations and the government. And there’s a little bit of truth in other parts of this JBS article. Their theory is that the government is allowing the roads to deteriorate on purpose -

So our present highway system, which is mainly an east/west system intended to get goods to and from our coastal ports, is being allowed to degrade, while a mainly north/south highway system, which is meant to use Mexican ports, labor, and trucking (bypassing American workers), is being built.

This doesn’t really work, since I35 runs north and south and will become part of the NAFTA Superhighway.

The Simple Answer

My theory is a little more simple. Our government is allowing our infrastructure to fall apart for reasons that Don states on top of the normal stupidity, corruption and greed from more glamorous pork projects. There’s more glory building a new bridge to nowhere than fixing bridges that are “still safe”.

Now what? How many more dead will finally wake the government up and will they start fixing stuff before more bridges and dams fail? It’s not that they don’t have the money, it’s the mis-management of what they do have.