INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS ARE EVIDENCE OF GOVERNMENT FAILURE.

They're slowly catching on in Wales.  The deputy minister for climate change, Lee Waters, gets it.  “We need a shift away from spending money on projects that encourage more people to drive, and spend more money on maintaining our roads and investing in real alternatives that give people a meaningful choice.”  It's likely the case that they've built more stuff than they can maintain, but if they have to bundle reality with climate virtue-signalling, fine.  Apparently, odd public offices are a thing in Wales, but if the holders' portfolios don't preclude saying sensible stuff, I can deal.

Sophie Howe, the future generations commissioner for Wales, said it was an important decision. “This is a huge step in the right direction for the healthier, resilient and more equal Wales,” she said.

“Wales has for too long been prioritising cars over people. I’m hopeful that this new decision signals more of the radical action that will be taken by the Welsh government’s new climate change ministry.

“An overreliance on the car has led to increased noise, poorer air quality, time wasted in traffic and an unacceptable burden on communities living near our most congested roads, often in areas where fewer people drive a car.”

The titular head of the self-styled Party of Science^(TM) in the United States, however, hasn't yet got the memo.

But if you look back across our history, from the Transcontinental Railroad to the creation of the Internet, you can see the truth in that idea, about coming together.  Because America — America has always been propelled into the future by landmark national investments — investments that only the government has the capacity to make; only the government, working together, could make.

Today happens to mark — coincidental — but today is the 60th [65th] anniversary of one of those significant investments to change the nation.  Sixty-five years ago today, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the bill that created the Interstate Highway System.  Sixty-five years ago today. That was the last infrastructure investment of the size and scope of what — the agreement I’m about to talk about today.

The transcriptionist calls attention to the small brain-fart, but not to the larger one, which is that the resources devoted to early public works, whether the National Road or the various canals or the land-grant railroads, might have been prematurely and inefficiently allocated, and that it took subsequent private investment to put the Pacific Railroad in a state of good repair, and future analysts, including researchers in the office of the Commissioner for Future Generations, might rank the decision not to make the Interstate Highways toll roads a blunder right up there with the War on Poverty and the corona tyranny.

The ficus, however, has to balance pressure from the rent-seekers of the construction lobby against pressure from the make-stuff-free poverty lobby.

You all know why that matters.  One in five miles of highway and roads in America are in poor condition.  One in five miles.  Some states it’s worse where the weather is tougher.  Five perc- — 50 years — 50 [40] percent of our bridges are over 50 years old.  More than 1,000 bridges here in Wisconsin are rated as structurally deficient by engineers.  One thousand just in Wisconsin.

And I’m not — that doesn’t make Wisconsin better or worse; it’s — all across the nation is this way.  The bridges — the 10 most traveled bridges in America need repair, and some need to be completely rebuilt.  More than 600 — more than 600 here in the state of Wisconsin — bridges have weight limits to prevent trucks from crossing.  That means long detours for farmers heading to market.

The transcriber again catches the small brain farts whilst eliding the possibility that the private toll bridges of the early colonial era might have generated the revenue to keep the bridges in a state of good repair, as well as the possibility that the federal subsidies for road and bridge building might incentivize the acquisition of larger trucks.  Perhaps the best thing for the national government to do is to go away, and let the local road commissioners and private enterprises maintain the section roads.

The brain farts continue.

But this is a drain on our economy, as well.  Typical American — typical American — and it varies slightly from state to state — but the typical American pays a hidden tax of more than $1,000 a year in wasted time — wasted time and fuel due to traffic congestion.

Now, in the more the rural areas, the less the congestion.  But it creates other difficulties.

You all know that feeling: losing time, sitting in traffic, or being rerouted because the bridge isn’t wide enough or the road is poorly maintained.

But if you lose time sitting in traffic while the bridge or road is being widened, you never get it back once the project is completed, because people adjust their habits until they're indifferent between sitting in traffic on the improved road or sitting in traffic on their existing route.

Curiously, we haven't heard anything from the transit lobby or the climate change worrywarts about how making the roads less unpleasant to use contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, or how this emphasis on automotive infrastructure might constitute a regressive transfer.

The roads are productive assets and perhaps the environmentalist wing of the self-styled party of science might be able to find common cause with libertarian-minded transportation advocates.