Chunks of asphalt aren't bothersome to a truck or even a Mini-Cooper but to a bicyclist it's bad news. I tend to ride in the lane these days to avoid these obstacles while motorists tend to skirt the nominal tire ruts and ride either with their driver's side wheel on the median or their passenger's side wheel on the bicycle lane marker. When they do the latter, there's no room at all for bikes.
I suppose this sorta think will become more commonplace over the next few years as Congress and the President fail to do anything meaningful to fix our "crumbling infrastructure" -- and remember, infrastructure means one thing and one thing only to Americans -- Roads. They will continue to deteriorate, methinks.
I got all around Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg a few weeks ago and noticed how it looks just like Greeley, Colorado, but with more humidity. A set of cities completely and totally dependent on imported petroleum and the motorized private vehicle. I didn't see one fucking person walk the entire week I was there, and indeed, neither did I walk. We spend how much to build handicap accessible ramps, push buttons for crossings, digital illuminated red-hands and a simulacrum of a white man walking, and thermo-plastic painted pedestrian lanes? Seems to me that Florida should just simply pass laws that forbid walking in the public realm and by doing so should save a few tens of millions annually by not having to install and maintain such public infrastructure sinkholes. No one walks in August in Tampa -- everything is done indoors under air conditioning, powered by coal or natural gas or nuclear.
I spent Hurricane Irene underneath the foot of the Verrazano Narrows bridge at Ft. Wadsworth on Staten Island:
Interesting to see it shut down, silent, and interesting to have had the opportunity 12 hours before the storm to drive across it without having to pay the $13 toll. This bridge was finished in 1964 and cost $366,000,000.00. I just can't possibly imagine what it would cost to rebuild this bridge, with labor unions scrambling and negotiating for time and a half and night premiums, with whole sections being fabricated in China and shipped through the Panama Canal, with safety measures, with political infighting between the two boroughs causing untold delays -- it's a good thing we knew how to build good shit forty years ago, and we knew how to build them without $3,545,600,000.00 cost overruns. If the toll is $13 today for a bridge built 40 years ago, it'd cost $42 tomorrow if a new one had to be built.
I would suspect that the Narrows bridge will likely never see any major replacement in my lifetime. I'd bet that we'll get a good 90 years of service from this beast if we don't neglect its maintenance. That, however, might prove to be difficult, as maintenance is increasingly difficult to come by these days and I suspect will be even more difficult going forward.
Ninety years. It's just a guess, but try to think of anything around you that was built on or before 1919...there are still some levees that were built by farmers that are still holding up, yes, but I really can't think of much else around here. Most of our big ticket infrastructure was really built up in the 50's, 60's, and 70's...or before. Replacing that work will be ugly and decidedly unsexy to the new crop of Americans who think that five bars on the smart phone represents the ultimate in advancement: New water mains. New underground 230kV electric cables. Flood control measures and new dams. Electrified trains.
It's just that we have no money to build shit like this anymore, nor do we have suitable fabrication facilities in this nation anymore to build bridge sections (why we are outsourcing them -- not only is China cheaper, they are among the few nations with the capacity to build such big items these days). Imagine having had to build a set of facilites just to build the bay bridge sections without any expectation that there would be future work available. Imagine the cost of the bridge, then.
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