A BRIDGE TO SOMEWHERE
As a logistics professional since 1972, infrastructure is a concept I can appreciate.
Infrastructure serves as the skeletal and circulatory system to the economic body. Our highways, bridges and levees function as the organs allowing the circulation of commerce fueling the world’s largest economy.
Today our economic body is silently dying from osteoporoses and hardening of the arteries. Folks outside of the logistics community only realize this when disaster strikes, such as when New Orleans is swept away along with inadequate levees from a hurricane, or drivers are dropped to a watery grave by a crumbling and neglected Minneapolis bridge.
America’s infrastructure has languished from neglect since the last great infrastructure project, the Eisenhower administration’s Interstate Highway System over fifty years ago. Today a federal commission calls for investment of 225 billion dollars annually for the next fifty years to maintain and improve infrastructure. Sadly, we currently provide less than 90 billion annually and many vital projects are shamefully delayed while Congress struggles to appropriate even that much.
There is long historical precedent for prioritizing infrastructure. In 1808, President Jefferson championed a national roads and canals project. In 1908, President Teddy Roosevelt promoted electrical generation. Twenty-five years later, his cousin FDR created the Works Progress Administration which helped lift the human spirit as it did our economy, re-building infrastructure. The aforementioned Interstate Highway System was a concept Eisenhower lifted from a defeated Germany in 1945. Touring the Nazi built Autobahn, Eisenhower realized America needed a world class highway system to develop our economy and promote military logistical support.
Next January we need a wise doctor in the White House who will write a strong prescription for infrastructure health. The economic body is not dying from old age. It is dying from neglect.
Originally published in Chicago Tribune, March 1, 2008 and
Daily Herald, March 1, 2008
Also published in Glen Ellyn News, March 19, 2008
Infrastructure serves as the skeletal and circulatory system to the economic body. Our highways, bridges and levees function as the organs allowing the circulation of commerce fueling the world’s largest economy.
Today our economic body is silently dying from osteoporoses and hardening of the arteries. Folks outside of the logistics community only realize this when disaster strikes, such as when New Orleans is swept away along with inadequate levees from a hurricane, or drivers are dropped to a watery grave by a crumbling and neglected Minneapolis bridge.
America’s infrastructure has languished from neglect since the last great infrastructure project, the Eisenhower administration’s Interstate Highway System over fifty years ago. Today a federal commission calls for investment of 225 billion dollars annually for the next fifty years to maintain and improve infrastructure. Sadly, we currently provide less than 90 billion annually and many vital projects are shamefully delayed while Congress struggles to appropriate even that much.
There is long historical precedent for prioritizing infrastructure. In 1808, President Jefferson championed a national roads and canals project. In 1908, President Teddy Roosevelt promoted electrical generation. Twenty-five years later, his cousin FDR created the Works Progress Administration which helped lift the human spirit as it did our economy, re-building infrastructure. The aforementioned Interstate Highway System was a concept Eisenhower lifted from a defeated Germany in 1945. Touring the Nazi built Autobahn, Eisenhower realized America needed a world class highway system to develop our economy and promote military logistical support.
Next January we need a wise doctor in the White House who will write a strong prescription for infrastructure health. The economic body is not dying from old age. It is dying from neglect.
Originally published in Chicago Tribune, March 1, 2008 and
Daily Herald, March 1, 2008
Also published in Glen Ellyn News, March 19, 2008
posted by Walt Zlotow at 6:09 AM
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