THE INFRASTRUCTURE CON.

From the founding of the American Republic, the use of public moneys to build internal improvements has been a Necessary and Proper way to spend tax dollars.

How has that worked out for us?

Answer me this, dear reader, what was the longest canal in the United States?  "The 468 mile long Wabash and Erie Canal, built between February 22, 1832 (George Washington’s Birthday) and 1853, was the longest canal ever built in the Western Hemisphere. It is surpassed only by the Grand Canal in China, which was 1,200 miles long."  By 1874, some sections had been taken out of service.  So it was with canals throughout the United States east of the Mississippi: apart from the Erie Canal, construction commenced on these projects after experimental railroads were beginning to prove their worth.  (Most famously, work on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal commenced in the Swamp, er, the Federal Capital, the same day the first stone was laid in Baltimore for the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road.

Now contemplate the map above.  In Cincinnati, the dry bed of the Miami and Erie Canal provided a cut for a subway that was later covered by a boulevard.  (No tracks were ever built in that subway.) Elsewhere in the Midwest, what remains of those mid-nineteenth century canals have generally become linear parks.  The promoters and subsidizers couldn't even get their scantlings together, thus the technically advanced Hennepin Canal of the early twentieth century was too narrow and too shallow for what was emerging as the inland waterway barge.

Two centuries later, the follies continue.  "American Bridges Are Falling Apart and There’s No Plan To Fix Them."  That's Strong Towns contributor Asia Mieleszko, and she's concentrating on the road bridges of Washington state.

Every year, another dozen bridges are weight restricted because of their condition and no plan to restore them is arranged. How did things get this bad?

The problem is multifold. Many of these bridges have been allowed to age past their lifespans without serious intervention. That’s not to say that WSDOT officials and concerned citizens haven’t been sounding the alarm. For example, the impending collapse of Seattle’s Ship Canal Bridge has been documented and debated for over a decade. At this point, there are literal chunks falling off the structure, but the city and state are paralyzed, citing the same excuses they did 10 years ago. It’s not that the excuses have no merit, but if the costs were a barrier back then, they’ve more than doubled by now, taking into account inflation and the added wear another decade wrought.

This inertia points to what WSDOT rightly identified as the main culprit: warped priorities. “For example, funding construction of a new section of highway may mean delaying needed bridge deck rehabilitation elsewhere,” the agency wrote in a document about its oldest bridges. “Such delays can be costly; if a bridge deck deteriorates to the point where replacement is the only option, the cost of restoring it to good condition may triple.”

I knew that day would come! "I'll save for another day the possibility that the federal government contributed to the problem, by giving state road commissioners all sorts of incentives to go ahead with projects that were eligible for federal matching funds. Now the Interstate Highways (well, apart from the pork-barrel ones to nowhere, where the matching funds haven't depreciated yet) are also old and tired."  So let it be with Washington's decaying bridges.

In the last 30 years, when many of the now-crumbling bridges were only beginning to demand repair, WSDOT began over 60 new, arguably excessive projects. These include adding lanes to Interstate 90 for a price tag of $627 million, the $2.67 billion Puget Sound Gateway projects and, perhaps most famously, the boring of the State Route 99 — or Alaskan Way — tunnel in Seattle. When the Alaskan Way Tunnel broke ground in 2013, Washington received an overall grade of C- for its infrastructure. The 2-mile project ultimately cost over $3 billion.

Yes, that 90% match on new projects sure makes spending money on new projects appealing.  Meanwhile, that 0% match on maintenance of existing projects makes deferring maintenance appealing, that is, until some new infrastructure porkulus makes printed money available for 100% of some projects.  Oops.

It’s not just that these projects diverted funds that could have otherwise gone toward maintaining the existing millions of miles of roadway in the state. They added to the state’s infrastructure liabilities. There are more square miles of road today in Washington than there were in 2010, 2000 or even 1990. That means the state is responsible for maintaining more square miles of road. If the state was struggling to maintain what it had in the past, it has even more to maintain now. And everything is older.

The argument generalizes.  But treating the roads and bridges as productive assets, and pricing them accordingly?  Not an option.  And, thus, a future generation of linear parks will emerge.  Such as, for example, portions of the formerly divided, limited-access Route 66, where the county highway departments recognized the folly of continuing to maintain all the lanes.