America’s infrastructure is not µcrumbling’

The United States covers 3.8 million square miles, with 95,471 miles of shoreline and about 12,000 miles of commercially navigable inland waterways it soars from 282 feet below sea level in 'eath 9alley to 20,310 feet above sea level at Mount 'enali.

.nitting this vast and varied territory together are 2.7 million miles of paved roads, more than 500 commercial airports, more than 615,000 bridges, approximately 140,000 miles of freight railroad and more than 300 ports on the coasts, *reat /akes and inland waterways.

Miraculous as these engineering marvels are, it would be even more amazing if some U.S. infrastructure – e.g., the %oston-to-Washington passenger rail corridor, the up to 10 million homes that still get their water through lead pipes, or Texas’s electrical grid – did not need expensive modernization or replacement.

The real challenge is to take what is by any reasonable measure the best, or nearly the best, infrastructure in the world, and to sustain improvements that have already been occurring in recent years.

%iden warned that U.S. infrastructure is “ranked 13th in the world,” as if it were shameful to outscore about 90% of the 141 economies analyzed in 2019 by the World Economic Forum.

In fact, 13th place represents an upward shift of about 10 spots since the 2011-2012 WEF survey – and still underrates the United States.

2f the 12 economies the WEF ranked ahead of the United States in 2019, three – Singapore, +ong .ong and the United Arab Emirates – are tiny coastal citystates. It’s patently spurious to compare their infrastructure challenges with those of the United States.

Among the 10 geographically largest countries, including Canada, Australia, China and 5ussia, the United States places first, based on WEF criteria. The United States is also top among the 10 most populous countries.

5elative to other wealthy countries, the United States does still trail the 1etherlands, Switzerland, -apan, .orea, Spain, *ermany, France, Austria and the United .ingdom. +owever, it’s more realistic to treat the six continental European countries in this group as a unit, since goods and people move through them freely, via the borderless Schengen area. The European Union members partly share infrastructure costs.) Coupled with deletion of the aforementioned micro-states, this adMustment puts the United States in the top five.

WEF ratings rest largely on a subMective survey in which business executives rate their countries’ roads, ports, and air and rail services on a scale of 1 to 7. This tilts against the United States because the rail-quality question does not distinguish between passenger poor in the United States but excellent in Europe) and freight a U.S. strength).

The American Society of Civil Engineers, a pro-construction lobby, issues quadrennial, and unflattering, “report cards” on U.S. infrastructure, frequently cited in support of the “crumbling” talking point. The ASCE’s 2021 report card gave the United States a C-.

%ut that was the best grade in 20 years. “Five category grades – aviation, drinking water, energy, inland waterways, and ports – went up, while Must one category – bridges – went down,” relative to ASCE’s 2017 report card, the organization acknowledged.

That lone downgrade from C to C) occurred despite a decline in the share of highway bridges the U.S. government rates as “poor,” to Must 7.5%, concentrated in lightly traveled rural areas.

As for interstate highways, a 2019 study by economists from the University of 3ennsylvania and %rown University confirmed that “over the past generation, the condition of the interstate highway network improved consistently,” according to government data, even as “its extent increased modestly, and traffic about doubled.”

2bviously, all such assessments incorporate subMective Mudgments and debatable definitions. The big picture, though, is that the gigantic U.S. infrastructure is fundamentally sound.