Blueprint America — with the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer — and Senior Correspondent Ray Suarez travel to each region of the country for a five part series focusing not only on the neglect and underfunding of the country’s decaying infrastructure, but also on solutions for and new thinking about these pervasive problems.

The breakdown of the levees in New Orleans and the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis are well known, but America’s infrastructure problems do not end in Louisiana and Minnesota.

Blueprint America — with the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer — and Senior Correspondent Ray Suarez travel to each region of the country for a five part series focusing not only on the neglect and underfunding of the country’s decaying infrastructure, but also on solutions for and new thinking about these pervasive problems. /wnet/blueprintamerica/files/2008/09/ba_thumb_newshour_intro.jpg ]]> http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/overview/18/feed/ 0 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/video-the-price-of-decay/1/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/video-the-price-of-decay/1/#comments Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:40:58 +0000 brianlee In Pennsylvania, there are nearly 6,000 bridges in disrepair – the most in the nation. According to the Federal Highway Administration, 39 percent of bridges in the state are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. In the first segment of a five part series on infrastructure in the U.S., NewsHour Senior Correspondent Ray Suarez reports with Blueprint America on Pennsylvania’s aging bridges.

In March of this year, an overpass on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia was found to be near collapse, resulting in an emergency repair job and the temporary closing of one of the northeast’s busiest roadways.

Replacing just this single troubled 8-mile section of highway will cost an estimated $2 billion.  And, like any other state, there is limited money to draw from — both on the state and federal level.

Gov. Ed Rendell

“States and local governments in this country pay 75 percent of the cost of maintaining our infrastructure,” says Gov. Ed Rendell (D., PA), an advocate for bipartisan efforts for increased federal infrastructure spending, “Unless the federal government is willing to step up and develop a real infrastructure repair program, we are never going to be able to do the two things we need to do: one, maintain what we have and two, build new things.”

Web Exclusive: For an extended interview on infrastructure with Gov. Ed Rendell, click here.

In Pennsylvania, there are nearly 6,000 bridges in disrepair – the most in the nation. According to the Federal Highway Administration, 39 percent of bridges in the state are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. In the first segment of a five part series on infrastructure in the U.S., NewsHour Senior Correspondent Ray Suarez reports with Blueprint America on Pennsylvania’s aging bridges. /wnet/blueprintamerica/files/2008/09/ba_thumb_newshour_decay.jpg /wnet/blueprintamerica/files/2008/09/ba_thumb_decay_video1.jpg ]]>

Although billions of dollars have been spent on New Orleans to help the city recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, one key to the city’s economic stability in the future may be its ability to revitalize its port system, which was built over a hundred years ago. In just over ten year’s time though, the amount of cargo it must handle is expected to double. Without heavy investment and careful planning, the already stressed New Orleans’ infrastructure will not be able to handle the imports and exports that local officials are hoping will help the local economy return to health.

New Orleans’ aging port is emblematic of others around the country. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the recent string of hurricanes, finding the money for improvement is difficult, especially as the city’s resources are already stretched.

Watch a commentary by the NewsHour’s Ray Suarez on the port problems in New Orleans

There are critical infrastructure decisions that need to be made in Buckeye if the town both wants to continue to expand and be able to support its current population. In the third segment of a five part series on infrastructure in the U.S., NewsHour Senior Correspondent Ray Suarez reports with Blueprint America on how the suburbs of Arizona grow with no boundaries.

Buckeye has largely welcomed its growth, annexing 370 square miles of surrounding unincorporated land into its city limits in the last several years. It has approved 22 master planned communities that are expected to house more than 400,000 people by 2030. At this rate of growth, Buckeye will cover more land than the city of Phoenix.

This growth, however, is not without challenges and drawbacks. Buckeye continues to suffer the effects of a stalled housing market. There were 468 foreclosures in the first six months of 2008, compared to 82 foreclosures during the same period in 2007 – a 470 percent increase. The influx of residents to Buckeye seems to have slowed dramatically. Of the 22 approved master planned communities surrounding the suburb, only seven are actually under construction.

In an article this past June, Catherine Reagor of the Arizona Republic reported:

“The town (Buckeye) sped up the annexation of tens of thousands of acres, beefed up its planning staff, formed its first economic-development group and looked forward to a bigger share of tax and other state government money to prepare for its population boon. But growth slowed so much in Buckeye that some home builders who bought parcels in new developments have lost those holdings to foreclosure, shutdown or filed for bankruptcy. Investors who bought homes during the boom believed they could quickly flip them for a profit because so many people were going to move to the town. A growing number of those homes are now in foreclosure. In the past few years, Buckeye’s planning staff has been downsized. Though the city gets more state funds for the additional land it annexed, Buckeye has to pay to maintain its vast borders where fewer than expected taxpayers now live.”

Nevertheless, a motion to annex a new unincorporated community is on the Town Council’s agenda every meeting.

Buckeye is an example of leap-frogging development – where new developments are proposed and built outside of the existing town boundaries. Usually, road, water and other infrastructure resources are limited in these new locations. The question then becomes who will take charge of building the needed infrastructure – the developers or the town? Buckeye currently has a plan for integrating new housing developments into the town’s existing infrastructure, but no real action has been taken.

Buckeye is located just 35 miles from central Phoenix, which translates into an hour to an hour and a half commute each way. The commuting traffic is causing longer backups on Interstate 10, and there is currently no real mass-transit option for reaching Phoenix. The town planners are hoping that Buckeye will develop and attract new business to the area, which would reduce the number of residents commuting to Phoenix. However, the current economic recession across America has hindered business growth in Buckeye too. Development of the Buckeye Corporate Center was put on hold again just in August, following a previous three year delay.

America’s 2008 air transportation needs are currently met with 1980s technology, resulting in all too familiar gridlock both on the ground and in the skies. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimates that air traffic will double in the next two decades. But even before rising fuel prices hammered airlines and their margins, the infrastructure that our airlines is built on – runways, flight paths and air traffic control technology – was already inadequate, outmoded and unable to grow its capacity. A planned upgrade announced in 2004 will not be completed until at least 2020 – at a cost of more than $20 billion.

It is an example of what to do right and, at the same time, what not to do when it comes to large urban infrastructure projects. In the last segment of a five part series on infrastructure in the U.S., NewsHour Senior Correspondent Ray Suarez reports with Blueprint America on the critical lessons learned from Boston’s Big Dig.

The Big Dig, in the end, submerged and expanded the 1.5 mile-long elevated Central Artery roadway, along a blight on the city’s North End; extended the Mass Pike (I-90) into the new Ted Williams Tunnel, creating direct access to Logan Airport and Boston’s North Shore; and built the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, a 10-lane cable-stayed bridge over the Charles River. All while keeping the city of Boston open for business.

Boston’s traffic problems reached critical mass by the early 1990s, when the Big Dig construction began. The elevated Central Artery, conceived as a modern “highway in the sky” in the 1950s, was eventually choked with 190,000 cars per day and six-to-eight hour traffic jams. Cars were unable to travel to Logan Airport without passing over the congested Artery and through Boston’s North End. The new Central Artery, in contrast, can carry up to 250,000 cars per day.

Submerging the old roadway has opened up surface roads, and more noticeably, given the city back over 300 acres of open space. Unlike the building process that created the old Central Artery, where over 20,000 residents were displaced and 1,000 buildings destroyed, the Big Dig’s “do-no-harm” approach to mitigating neighborhood, business and environmental concerns meant no homes or businesses paid the price for the construction.

Despite its overall successes, as both an infrastructure and city-building endeavor, the Big Dig is not without criticisms or failures. The project was originally budgeted at $2.6 billion dollars – its final costs were over $14.6 billion. It subjected the city’s residents to fifteen years of non-stop construction and a maze of detours. Lack of sufficient oversight kept tax payers in the dark about the true costs of the project for several years.

Additional transit projects, including Metro extensions promised as part of the Dig’s mitigation plans, remain largely unbuilt. And in 2006, a Boston resident was killed when a 26-ton section of the I-90 tunnel ceiling collapsed. That tragedy, and the engineering flaws responsible for it, resulted in a $450 million dollar lawsuit settlement between the state of Massachusetts, the Big Dig’s construction management company — Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff — and other construction firms. A civil suit brought by the victim’s family against the construction contractors was just settled for $28 million.