[Themaintainers] Fix vs Expand roads

[Andrew Russell]

Interesting from WaPo - 
Infrastructure plan calls for fixing the nation’s existing roads. Some states are still focused on expansion.

Data analysis by The Washington Post shows a fifth of the nation’s major roads were rated in poor condition in 2019

By
Ian Duncan <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/ian-duncan/>, 
Michael Laris <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/michael-laris/>and 
Kate Rabinowitz <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/kate-rabinowitz/> 
May 23, 2021 at 7:11 p.m. EDT
For all the ambition of President Biden’s infrastructure proposal — massive spending boosts on trains and buses and a push to get Americans into electric cars — its priority for the nation’s road network is more basic: Fix them.

The Federal Highway Administration estimates a $435 billion backlog of rehabilitation needs, while an analysis of agency data by The Washington Post shows a fifth of the nation’s major roads, stretching almost 164,000 miles, were rated in poor condition in 2019. That figure has stayed mostly unchanged for a decade.

Yet more than a third of states’ capital spending on roads that year, $19 billion, went toward expanding the road network rather than chipping away at the backlog.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2021/05/23/highway-funding-infrastructure/





_____

Andrew L. Russell, Ph.D.
+ Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, SUNY Polytechnic Institute
+ Co-Director, The Maintainers <https://themaintainers.org/>
+ Co-Author, The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most <https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/576816/the-innovation-delusion-by-lee-vinsel-and-andrew-l-russell/>
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