System Overload

[cpzilliacus]

New Yorker: System Overload

"An example for the Nation" is how President Lyndon Johnson imagined Washington's Metro, in a letter that he wrote fifty years ago to an official involved in planning it. And so it was. When the Metro opened, ten years later, in 1976, it was acclaimed as a farsighted fusion of design and utility, a system generations ahead of those in other cities. Today, the Metro is in such a state that fixing it may require shutting whole lines for months at a time. It's yet again an example for the nation, but now it's an example of how underinvestment and political dysfunction have left America with infrastructure that's failing and often downright dangerous.

From the crumbling bridges of California to the overflowing sewage drains of Houston and the rusting railroad tracks in the Northeast Corridor, decaying infrastructure is all around us, and the consequences are so familiar that we barely notice them–like urban traffic congestion, slow-moving trains, and flights that are often disrupted, thanks to an outdated air-traffic-control system. The costs are significant, once you reckon wasted time, lost productivity, poor public-health outcomes, and increased carbon emissions. As Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor and the author of "Move,"  a recent book on the subject, told me, "Infrastructure is such a dull word. But it's really an issue that touches almost everything."

[Max Rockatansky]

Ironically this is where the Taxed for Driving thread went since it involves taxes for infrastructure redevelopment.