We’re still receiving information about yesterday’s deadly crash on Washington, D.C.’s Metro system.  Having spent some time there (and almost relocating there a little less than a year ago), I’ve become familiar with the service, and a couple of things are coming up in my memory:

  1. Every time I’ve ridden a Metro train, I’ve found it to be quiet and clean — a feature that is not shared by its Chicago brethren.
  2. Almost every time I’ve ridden a Metro train, I couldn’t understand the train operator’s announcement of upcoming stations and I’ve had to be extra vigilant paying attention.

That’s what I remember the most; well, that and the cool blinking lights along the sides of the platforms that indicate a train is approaching.  (Last time I was there, though, it seemed like these have fallen into disrepair or are being phased out of use.  Its a pity.  I love unique things like that which add a certain intangible benefit to otherwise utilitarian aspects of civil engineering.)  My heart goes out to the families of those who died, and I hope for a speedy recovery for those injured — both of physical and mental injuries.  Its a shame that it always comes to something like this to hopefully get people to listen to this loud, echoing announcement:

AMERICA! YOUR COUNTRY IS CRUMBLING!

As I ride around on the Chicago L — a system which, for those who wonder about these things, doesn’t even have the “outdated” safety systems or “failing” relays that are being scrutinized on Metro but instead relies solely on operator driving skills with minimal automatic-kill devices to stop the train when approaching a dangerous system — I can’t help but notice it in my own city.  Train stations showing their age over the past century or more.  Steel elevated tracks that appear ready to collapse at any moment from decades upon decades of rust and deferred maintenance.  Rail cars being used far beyond their warranted and designed lifespan.  New technologies literally sailing over our aging, antiquated system.

Driving north on Lake Shore Drive this morning, I once again encountered a pothole of death, swerving to miss its deep trench of exposed rebar.  Driving over it at a controlled 5 mph would have been hazardous; had I been unable to swerve or apply the brakes at even the posted 45 mph (let alone my flow-of-traffic 55 mph) I would have had some serious damage.  My hometown ties still hold strong and I can’t get the images of the collapsed I-35W bridge in the Mississippi River out of my head.  Between that and living through the massive Marquette Interchange reconstruction in Milwaukee, I now instinctively look at the underside of bridges as I pass under them, and more often than not I cringe as I see the tired, worn out concrete dropping its calling cards for someone to repair it.

We removed upgraded destroyed our rail infrastructure.  We have miserably failed to maintain its replacement: the Interstate highway system.  Our attempts at efficient bus transportation has been equally poor.  As we moved further and further from city centers, we brought along our cars, trucks, and SUV’s.  We required our investment funds to be spent on new infrastructure — new roads, new water mains, new sewage lines, new energy construction — rather than attempting to maintain existing structures.  We created fictitious balanced budgets on the back of generations to come as we deferred maintenance, expecting less and less and instead requiring more and more of the future.

And this is why U.S. infrastructure terrifies me: because, try as much as our “leaders” might, they can’t indefinitely expand a definitive lifespan.  We will continue to have tragic accidents like Washington experienced yesterday until We The People stand up and say that we’ve had enough!  On Thursday, despite all of the previous doomsday scenarios from the CTA and RTA, here in Chicago I believe we will likely experience the end of those “comfortable” cutbacks of deferred maintenance.  Our insistence on economic unsustainability has reached its endpoint.  To prevent resources from being stretched too thin, to appease the suburban NIMBYs (and, yes, to support a bloated administrative structure hellbent on the politics of patronage) we will once again see a proposal that will cut transit service to those who need it the most.  To maintain service without a significant investment in capital improvements would be asking for an accident.  And without that significant investment, the RTA and its agencies cannot continue to operate the system at its current scale.

The answer is not privitization or continuing 1980’s style American capitalism.  Its not raising user fees, fares, tolls, etc.  We can’t even, for the short term, expect balanced budgets for our capital expenses.  We’re so far past each of those things its impossible to see them in the cracked, broken rearview mirror.  Its time to stop bailing out Corporate America and start focusing our energies on rebuilding the America that no one likes to see, no one likes to talk about: the part of America that moves us, that affects our everyday existence.

One of my mentors in college used to talk about “ugly projects,” the types of things that no one wants to donate money for or slap a dedication plaque on, but things that have to be done because if they fail everyone notices.  In college, these were things like boilers, water heaters, lavatory fixtures, sidewalks, steam distribution pipes, electrical wiring, network equipment.  Brand new, they are truly an investment.  Well-maintained, they are assuredly (though consistently) expensive.  To repair often costs more than their initial cost.

Its about 20 years past time for those ugly projects.  We don’t have another 20.