Before the middle of the last century, it was no exaggeration to say that the United States was an infrastructure maniac. From the frantic expansion of railroads at the end of the 19th century to the rapid infrastructure construction under Roosevelt's New Deal in the 30s of the 20th century, Americans have laid out the world's most developed transportation network, energy system and public facilities on this land with iron-fisted determination and sweat. However, just when people thought that the infrastructure of the United States would never end, this former "infrastructure maniac" somehow fell into a twilight, and many glorious projects began to fall into dilapidation, and new construction gradually drifted away.
U.S. Transportation Network
Domineering president-style crazy expansion
America's infrastructure boom dates back to the late 19th century, when shipping was saturated and railroads were a tempting land to be cultivated. As a result, a group of shipping tycoons keenly smelled business opportunities and devoted themselves to the railway business. They hold large sums of money in their hands, their eyes are like torches, not only violently enclosing land and crazy construction, but also going back and forth and plundering each other, turning the railway industry into a bloody capital game.
In that era of primitive accumulation, the only rule of conduct for capitalists was to "look at the money". As long as it's profitable, they'll be in high spirits and motivated. This simple impulse to pursue profits, coupled with the tenacious and hard-working national character of the American people, led to the construction of 200,000 kilometers of railway lines in the United States in just 10 years. Since then, the genes of crazy infrastructure have been deeply implanted in the blood of this young nation.
It wasn't until the 30s of the 20th century that the genes of this crazy infrastructure erupted again. In order to save the American economy, which was mired in the Great Depression, President Roosevelt introduced a series of revitalization measures, known as the "Roosevelt New Deal". One of the most exciting is to vigorously promote the construction of public infrastructure, in the form of cash-for-work, while absorbing the unemployed and increasing disposable income, improve people's livelihood facilities and protect the environment and ecology.
Cornelius Vanderbilt, an American railroad magnate
This massive infrastructure campaign is regarded as the largest in human history. The federal government alone spends $18 billion on projects and has built millions of acres of parks, hundreds of thousands of miles of highways, tens of thousands of bridges, and countless airports, schools, and hospitals across the country. Some of the most famous engineering masterpieces such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Empire State Building in New York, and the Hoover Dam were also left behind during this period.
In the 50s of the 20th century, the Americans suddenly seemed to find that they had nothing left to repair. Railways, roads, canals, airports, bridges...... All the infrastructure that should have been built has been completed, and the redundant construction and waste of resources that should not have been done have been done. They feel that the infrastructure project seems to have reached its peak, and there is no need to waste precious manpower and material resources. In this way, with the confidence that "nothing can be repaired", the United States has suspended the pace of infrastructure construction since the 50s of the 20th century, and the interstate highway and the St. Lawrence Sea Canal have become the last swan song.
Although the behavior of eating the old book is not very good, the United States does have the capital to eat the old book. After the frenzied construction of Roosevelt's New Deal, the infrastructure of the United States once reached a height that was difficult for other countries to achieve, and for a long time it sat on the world's largest railroad, aviation, communications, and logistics networks, as well as a huge energy system.
To this day, many airports in the U.S. continue to be impressively efficient in planning and operating their routes. In the 20th century, the radial subway lines in major cities also met the needs of people to travel from the suburbs to the city center. It can be said that although the United States was a little shoddy during the frenzied construction, on the whole, they still formulated plans and design drawings in accordance with the situation and needs at that time.
The problem is that situations and needs change. As urbanization progresses, people no longer have to travel from the suburbs to the city center, but from one residential area to another, and the radial subway lines become a burden. At the same time, the old roads, airports and bridges are gradually aging and can no longer meet the growing demand for travel.
Austin, the capital of Texas, hit by a blizzard
In the past two years, Texas has been hit by severe snowstorms and extreme cold, the power grid and water supply system have been paralyzed, and countless residents have shivered in the freezing cold of minus 10 degrees Celsius, and have to start heating and making fires.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the overall rating of U.S. infrastructure in recent years has been only C-, or "a mediocre level with significant flaws." About 33 per cent of the roads need to be repaired, 25 per cent of the bridges are over 50 years old, and 17 per cent of the dams are "potentially high hazard".
Funding shortages and talent gaps
If we want to revive infrastructure, money and talent are the two key points, but these are the two major dilemmas that the United States is currently facing.
To raise the overall level of infrastructure in the United States to B, at least $2.6 trillion needs to be invested over the next 10 years. But the U.S. government simply can't afford that much money because it has been plagued by tax shortages. There are too many multinational corporations in the United States, and they always have a way to avoid taxes, and the government has to rely on meager working-class taxes to sustain spending. If taxes are raised, it may affect business operations, exacerbate unemployment, reduce consumption, and drag down GDP growth.
U.S. tax structure
Another major dilemma is the disappointment of technicians. Since the middle of the last century, there have been no major infrastructure projects in the United States. Without engineering, there is no demand, and without demand, people naturally have no motivation to devote themselves to the industry. As a result, the technical talent for infrastructure engineering withered for a while, and when the United States wanted to rebuild the railroads, it was no longer able to produce seamless rails, because the factories and skilled workers engaged in this field no longer existed.
The low construction efficiency is even worse. On the one hand, the United States has done a very good job of protecting workers' rights, implementing a strict eight-hour workday, and any bad weather is considered a paid holiday. On the other hand, there is a real problem of inefficiencies on the site, and it is reported that only one or two people in the construction site team of five or six people are actually working, and the others are either pointing fingers or smoking boredly.
In this way, if you want to build a high-speed rail from scratch in the United States, I am afraid that by the day the project is completed, the earth may have been destroyed.
Faced with such a dilemma, the new President Biden immediately showed his determination to turn things around after taking office. Speaking in Pittsburgh, a traditional industrial city, he announced a $2.25 trillion "infrastructure and economic reconstruction plan" that will be the largest infrastructure investment in the United States since Roosevelt's New Deal.
However, compared with the past, the focus of infrastructure construction has shifted this time. It is no longer simply building roads and laying iron, but is focusing on new infrastructure areas such as information infrastructure, convergence infrastructure and innovation infrastructure. This creates an interesting paradox: although the Internet was born on the impetus of the new infrastructure in the United States, the average Internet speed in the United States still lags far behind that of countries such as South Korea and Norway because the traditional infrastructure cannot keep up.
Map of the average speed distribution of mobile networks by country
Biden's generosity is certainly commendable, but there are still many difficulties to be solved in order to truly revive the infrastructure of the United States: how to raise funds, how to retrain a large number of technical talents, how to improve the enthusiasm of workers, and how to ensure the quality of projects......
For a long time, the American airports will still be, as The Economist puts it, "the most shabby welcome the world's greatest country," to revive infrastructure, and so on.