The importance of infrastructure

Another excerpt from chapter 2 of the Upper Room Public Relations Handbook:


Today, as a society, we depend on infrastructure: power lines, water pipes, phone lines, network cables, cellular towers, network routers, and more. Likewise, infrastructure is critical for public relations as it supports the entirety of the public relations program. We cannot do anything without the infrastructure to support it!
 
Today the first high speed rail project in the United States was approved in California: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18748717. This is a critical project that is needed to improve our nation's infrastructure. Western Europe and Japan are currently ahead of us in the development of high-speed rail, and we cannot afford to fall behind the rest of the first world countries in our infrastructure.

And yes, I agree that having the first leg of the line built between Merced and Bakersfield is a bad idea. The idea is to build the first segment in a location where you will get a lot of riders, despite the line still being incomplete. Then, with the revenue from this first segment, you go ahead and build the second segment, and so on, and so forth. I understand that it is expensive to build through urban areas, so that might not be the best place to begin. But what about somewhere like Stockton or Sacramento, where there is a large city, but not miles and miles of urban sprawl? It sounds like earmarking to me, though I of course haven't looked at the bill. But something is better than nothing, as long as we are moving forward.

Every day, we depend on infrastructure. That is how we get power and water: for Los Angeles, there is a huge aqueduct providing your water supply. Something happens to it, and there goes a lot of your water, until it can be repaired. The Internet depends on infrastructure: networks, routers, and fiber-optic cables. But our infrastructure is crumbling and weak, and in need of repair. Many of our roads are in decay, especially in California, where they were built during the 1960's and 1970's. One question I have to ask is this: how was our power grid so weak that one operator's mistake was able to blackout all of San Diego and Imperial Counties, part of Orange County, and part of Baja California Norte (even thought that isn't in the US)?

I close with an editorial that I wrote for the U.S. Roads WikiProject Newsletter in August 2007. I was 17 at the time... but it provides something to think about for today.

8 Minnesota bridge collapses

The I-35W Mississippi River bridge was an eight-lane, 1,907 feet (581 m) steel truss bridge that carried Interstate 35W across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The bridge, maintained by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT), was Minnesota's third-busiest,^[1][2] carrying 140,000 vehicles daily.^[3]
At 6:05 pm, during the Wednesday evening rush hour on August 1, 2007, the main spans of the bridge collapsed, falling into the river and onto its banks. As of August 16, 2007 11 deaths had been attributed to the collapse while two individuals remained missing and were believed to be dead.^[4][5][6][7] The bridge collapse garnered international attention including visits from the President, Minnesota's two U.S. senators, and swarms of media.^[8]

Sources:

1. ^ "2006 Metro Area Traffic Volume Index Map" (pdf). MNDOT. 2006. Retrieved 2007-08-09. This is the index map for MnDOT's 2006 traffic volumes. The relevant maps showing the highest river bridge traffic volumes are Maps 3E and 3F.
2. ^ Weeks, John A. III (2007). "I-35W Bridge Collapse Myths And Conspiracies". John A. Weeks III. Retrieved 2007-08-06.
3. ^ "2006 Downtown Minneapolis Traffic Volumes". Minnesota Department of Transportation. 2006. Retrieved 2007-08-07.
4. ^ Condon, Patrick (2007-08-17). "Human remains found in two vehicles recovered at bridge collapse". Minnesota Public radio. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
5. ^ Scolforo, Mark; Brian Bakst and Doug Glass (2007-08-07). "Minn. bridge searchers turn to Navy". Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-08-07.
6. ^ Condon, Patrick (2007-08-09). "Two bodies recovered at bridge site; Feds warn states on bridge safety". Minnesota Public Radio. Retrieved 2007-08-09.
7. ^ "Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Bulletin Page". 2007-08-12. Retrieved 2007-08-12.
8. ^ I-35W Mississippi River bridge

8.1 One roadgeek's perspective

By Rschen7754
Surely, this was not the first bridge collapse that America has experienced. As has been mentioned repeatedly, disasters have occurred before, such as at the MacArthur Maze this year and on Interstate 40 in Oklahoma in 2002 [1]. But this was truly catastrophic in that this spontaneously occurred during rush hour in a large city. I was on vacation during the time of the bridge collapse.
Unfortunately, this event was tragic due to the loss of life involved. The death toll has not been finalized, but eleven have been confirmed dead. Our thoughts go out to the families of those who were lost.
It was interesting to see the varied reactions of the community as I traveled back from Montana to Washington. Suddenly, people were worried about Montana bridges. However, there were few that were deemed unsafe to drive on. FOX News had continuing coverage of the events for the first two days of the aftermath, even though they sometimes repeated information over and over again.
Witnessing the building of the Wikipedia article relating to the bridge was also fascinating. Once the vandalism and bad-faith edits went away, people posted quality information and photographs about the collapse. The article even had the proposed detours from MnDOT, the state department of transportation. Being a roadgeek and being somewhat familiar with the significance of such a bridge was also influential on my understanding of the event.
In Idaho, I saw an interesting news editorial regarding the bridge collapse. CNN implied that Bud Schuster, the former congressman who was the chair of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in Congress, used taxpayer dollars to build projects such as Interstate 99 in his own congressional district rather than spending them on bridge maintenance.
When I returned to Washington, newspaper editorials quickly reassured citizens that Washington bridges were safe. However, one article that I read the next week detailed the closing of an unsafe bridge that was scheduled to be demolished in two weeks regardless.
Highway maintenance is important in the United States. The infrastructure of a nation to transport goods and people is important and should not be neglected. In this current age of environmentalism and concerns about global warming, we must be careful not to shift to the other end of the spectrum and thus be wary about conducting necessary repairs to roads and bridges.