Dear Reader,
It seems to me that the news is full of stories about our crumbling roads. Not to be outdone the bridges are ready to catastrophically fail at any second. Remember London Bridges Falling Down?
Well here is a innovative concept. Look at what has been done in the past and worked. Simple use of best practice. What roads and what bridges built by what people in the past have held up the best and fulfilled the task they were designed to do?
The answer is clear, Roman roads and bridges. In Europe today there are Roman bridges that carry car and truck traffic. Think about that for a moment. These bridges were built over a thousand years ago. Thousand year old bridges working today. Compare that to bridges built today.
The state of the art bridges on our intestate highway system are elegant and thin. They span great distances while carrying great loads, (cars and trucks). They also only last thirty to fifty years before they need to be totally rebuilt. Some abutments can stay and the steel can sometimes be reused but obsolescence is built in. One half century compared to ten centuries of functional life.
On an annualized maintenance cost basis the Roman made bridge is exponentially more cost efficient. Plus think of how much more transportation funds would be available for road improvement. Forget for the sake of argument that a free spending legislature might rob some of the transportation funds for some other enterprise like education spending.
Some would argue that building a dry laid stone bridge today would be too difficult. With CAD software and thousands of grout piles throughout the USA. Simply put a modern Saw plant at the base of a large grout pile, take prints from engineers, and a computerized saw could turn out bridges like kits. Some assembly required. The means are at hand, The will but lacking.
Instead of burdening our children with crushing debt and obsolete infrastructure perhaps we might think of making some things that actually last.
