Suffocating traffic, crumbling roads, failing bridges, and a shortage in funding earned the U.S.A. a grade of D+ from the U.S. Department of Transportation in their 2015 report, “Beyond Traffic.”
To be clear, we wanted an A or even A+, as in, “Good job, America; you aced it!”
Instead, the USDOT gave a grim appraisal of a transportation system that will rapidly deteriorate in the next few decades.
What were the main points in this study?
- 16th is how we rank globally in the quality of our roads
- 23 years is how long we’ve gone without increasing the Federal gas tax
- $36.8 billion is how much we’re short in infrastructure improvements
- 40 hours is the average American’s time spent in traffic annually
- 70 million people will be added to the U.S. in the next 30 years
- $121 billion is the annual cost of traffic to the economy
What do all those numbers mean?
A D+, Jimmy, a D+. If our roads were an assignment that we were turning in at school, we would have gotten a nearly failing grade written on it with a big red marker.
And remember, this is from the U.S. Department of Transportation, not some random blog on the Internet. While you’d expect that the U.S. would be number one in the world given our superpower status and how much we like to drive, you’d be wrong. No A+ for us. Just a 16th place certificate, right behind Luxembourg.
Luxembourg, y’all. That’s a country with a gross domestic product of about $57 billion, which is only slightly more than Lowe’s Home Improvement’s gross revenue.
What should we do about this?
Are you sitting down? Because we need to spend some money. Finland has better roads than we do. So does Taiwan, Oman, France, Austria, and Portugal.
It is not fun to be on a bridge when it collapses. It’s even less fun when a chunk of asphalt smashes through your windshield on the highway. The American attitude of, “It’s fine, ignore it,” is sending us straight to last place, which is not where America is accustomed to be.
If your idea of America is being great and a leader, let’s start with how we get to work, okay?