Skip to main content

Deferred Maintenance

I once worked at a public university that had a huge 'deferred maintenance' problem. Their major equipment was often 35 years old with an expected lifetime of 30 years. As a result, they were constantly doing repairs and paying overtime, but had little time to do preventive maintenance and little money to make pro-active investments in new equipment. In one dorm, water from bad showers on the upper floors started leaking into the main lobby, and the 'fix' was to drag out garbage cans to catch the water. I was told that repairing the plumbing itself was expensive so it was being figured into the "five-year budget plan." The garbage can fix went on for at least a year.


A two-page spread in The Atlantic Monthly (March 2008, p 38-39) calls out our nation's growing infrastructure problem. This is a real 'tragedy of the commons' situation: individuals are not willing to give up more tax money if they don't see a real-time, personal benefit. At the same time, the costs of poor infrastructure are growing. As we fall behind the curve, more money will go to waste and repair and less to investment, a dangerous spiral.
Infrastructure would be a great question for a Presidential debate. How will we compete with foreign countries where transportation is relatively cheap and easy? As the Atlantic article states, "Arriving at Shanghai's modern Pudong airport, you can hop aboard a maglev train that gets you downtown in eight minutes, at speeds approaching 300 miles an hour. When you land at JFK, on the other hand, you'll have to take a train to Queens, walk over an indoor bridge, and then transfer to the antiquated Long Island Rail Road; from there, downtown Manhattan is another 35 minutes away."

America's expansiveness has always been one of our strengths, and has enhanced our lifestyles, productivity growth, and security. That expansiveness can become a burden if the cost of moving people and goods across it is restrictive. The interstate highway system was a phenomenal investment that turned the problem of vast space into an advantage. We now need a modern national cargo rail system, as well as dramatically improved urban transit, or the American expanse will become a burden.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 2020 Vote: Bending toward justice

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.  --  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. My hero, Dr. King, was wrong about justice. I love Dr. King. His writings and speeches are collected in a book called “A Testament of Hope”. That book was a revelation for me. Dr. King had a moral clarity that is rare in this world. Many of his observations were accurate, wise, and timeless. But the ‘arc of the moral universe’ statement is misleading. We are promised no such experience in this world. In Dr. King’s time, the quote may have been both accurate and wise. King saw the expanding reach of national newspapers and television networks. When the nation, through that new media, was exposed to the reality and brutality of overt Southern racism--then the nation, which believed it shared a common and decent morality, imposed that morality on the South. While Dr. King’s understanding may have been both accurate and wise, it was not timeless. This is where my moral hero comes u...
Post a Comment
Read more

Whose fault are high gas prices?

GM recently announced the closing of several auto plants in North America, primarily those that make large, gas inefficient vehicles. The news anchor began the segment with "Due to high gas prices..." Since everyone's blaming high gas prices for our woes these days, it begs the question "Whose fault are high gas prices?" Your driveway is the first place to look for answers. If your car gets bad mileage, that's probably your fault. Some luck, huh? After that, I blame "the invisible hand." This is the idea that when everyone follows their own self-interest in a free market, everyone ends up better off. Everyone is motivated to work hard and be efficient and produce goods that others want to trade for. Free markets do a fine job of producing wealth and prosperity, but they've really botched the energy situation. For all it's glory, the invisible hand has little strategic foresight. In the 1970s, we learned that America was vulnerable to high e...
Post a Comment
Read more