Public Transportation and Smart Growth

It is to maintain our infrastructure versus building new. As a civil engineer involved with design and construction of roads and bridges, I can tell you that the maintenance of traffic that it takes to repair an existing bridge is outrageous. The public gets very angry at even the least inconvenience so when a 4 lane bridge is replaced, all 4 lanes have to remain open the entire time of the construction. Very often that requires putting materials (asphalt typically) in place for temporary traffic and then taking it back up before the end of the project.

Compare that to building a bridge out across a pasture or a meadow and it's easy to see why the maintenance that we need falls short of the funding available.

If we are ever going to successfully keep up with our roadway infrastructure maintenance needs, we are going to need a program that encourages people to work from home and generally travel less.