Here's more shovel ready

For the past week, I have beat on the local and national pols who have spent literally trillions opf dollars on all kinds of crap, while our national infrastructure crumbles.

In particular, the Brent Spence Bridge which will see more people die on it than any bridge in the country. Unfortunately, it will happen one at a time as to avoid any serious media/public scrutiny.

But this area is the only area in need of a major artery fix. How about New York..............

Last October, more than a year into his $787 billion stimulus program, President Obama concluded in a New York Times Magazine interview that “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.” To learn why America can’t build stuff quickly (or even slowly), Obama should take a rush-hour ride over the Tappan Zee Bridge, which connects Rockland and Westchester Counties over the Hudson River, just north of New York City.

The Tappan Zee exemplifies the state of America’s infrastructure in 2011. We rely on it more than ever: each year, 51 million cars, trucks, and buses traverse the seven-lane “Tap,” as locals call it. More people commute over it than through the Lincoln or the Holland Tunnel, both of which cross the river to the south. Yet New York outgrew the bridge decades ago, with today’s traffic far exceeding the structure’s designed capacity. Worse, the Tappan Zee is a disaster in slow motion. Absent ceaseless repairs and ever-vigilant inspectors, it could collapse. Even short of such a disaster, the bridge’s deterioration poses a significant risk to the regional economy: if state officials ever felt that they were losing the battle against the Tap’s decay, they would shut it immediately, diverting traffic to already-clogged arteries to the south and preventing thousands of the downstate region’s workers and customers from getting to their destinations.

The Tappan Zee’s parlous condition is nothing new. Yet New York State, after more than a decade of halfhearted attempts to start building a replacement, remains at least another decade away from finishing a new bridge—in fact, a half-decade away from even beginning the project. This failure reflects a lack of political will, a weakness that threatens the Empire State’s capacity to grow.

Now let's hear a collective yawn from this administration.

But hey there's 45 mph high speed rail projects to get to.....

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