America’s Need For A Better Infrastructure Network
Transportation infrastructure. Probably one of the most lackluster topics there is to discuss, however, it is extremely important. In the status quo, the United States’ transportation infrastructure system is quickly crumbling. In fact, according to the Federal Highway Administration’s Bridge Inventory, 24.3 % of all bridges in the United States are either structurally deficient or obsolete. That is an unbelievable 145,000 bridges that need to be repaired. Additionally, 65 % of America’s major roads are rated to be in a less than good condition. These numbers are incredibly high for a nation as developed as the United States.
One may be wondering at this point, “What does transportation infrastructure have to do with networks?” The answer is that the United States infrastructure is one of its biggest physical networks in the country. On a large scale, one can think of the country as a graph that contains cities and towns as nodes and the roads as the edges. On a smaller scale, key points in each city could be nodes and the roads would once again be the edges. Highways, roads and bridges make it possible to ship goods all over the nation. A failing infrastructure network means that shipping goods from city to city takes more time. As many people believe, time is money and therefore, deficient infrastructure is wasting money. One of the most major issues is congestion. The Texas Transportation Institute estimated that in 2011, traffic congestion in urban areas cost American commuters 5.5 billion hours of being stuck in traffic. That means commuters had to collectively pay for an extra 2.9 billion gallons of fuel. This combination of fuel and time resulted in a waste of more than $120 billion. That is a huge sum of money for commuters to be paying just to be stuck in traffic.
Now that it has been established that there are major issues with the transportation infrastructure system and that the network’s inefficiencies are very costly, the question becomes “How do we fix it?”. A general answer would be to increase spending from the public sector. However, specifically there needs to be at least two measures taken. First, the outdated roads and bridges need to be fixed and revamped. Second, and probably more importantly, rail and highway bottlenecks need to be reduced. Bottlenecks are traffic congestion mainly caused by a road’s deficiency. This could either be a curvy road, faulty stoplight, or a merging of roads to one. Graphically, the latter example would be seen as many edges combining into a single edge. The issue is that the single edge is as wide as the combined other three edges, so congestion occurs. In conclusion, transportation infrastructure may be a dull topic but the United States need’s to fix one of its most crucial physical networks.
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