The Bridge, the Mine, the Monster Truck

[Maitre]

I doubt you will understand this... But, war or not, it wouldn't matter. Bridge and road building isn't sexy like light rail, or hiking and biking trails. The politicians, Republican and Democrats alike, have driven the funding into the realm of vote pandering wretched excess, rather than boring old infrastructure.

I can certainly understand the vote pandering issue. Living in Northern Virginia is a little like living in Austin TX, a bit of a separate little world from the rest of the state. Big campaign promises are in the wind already about making more of the commonwealth’s budget for transportation come our direction and making sure that Richmond pays attention to the woes of the northern Virginian. Personally, I think it's ridiculous, as it seems terribly unlikely that legislation could be enacted to tell VDOT where to spend it's money, but then again, odd things seem to make their way into a lot of funding bills, both state and federal.

In other bridge news, the DC government has sent the head of bridge inspection on the radio circuit lately ensuring folks that the designation of "functionally obsolete" does not mean that a bridge will collapse tomorrow. Though it has brought to light that the majority of bridge inspection in the nation's capital is 1) entirely visual in nature; and 2) outsourced to private contractors.

With regard to building roads properly, the last time major highway construction took place on a national scale was quite a while before I was born. And, many of those projects have, in fact, come to the end of their expected life, so the effort of replacing statewide infrastructure is quite a bit larger project than most states could take on, in addition to the regular improving schools, helping the populace, etc. that they already promise to accomplish. I can understand why the approach is to patch as much as possible in order to avoid outright replacement, but like the so-called crises of Social Security, the time will soon come that major expenses will need to be undertaken, and I don't think personal transportation savings accounts will come close to solving this problem.