Infrastructure

President Obama's State of the Union address presented an expanded vision of smart government to create jobs and revive the economy. Yet he lowered his sights on the single policy that would both jump-start the economy in the short term and create the conditions for long-term growth: infrastructure spending . Having tried several times to propose infrastructure bills of around $50 billion — or just 0.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)...

SEROPEDICA, Brazil — There's a storage room just off a university lab that gives students more experience than many can handle: Skinned pigs and cats, disembodied cow livers, intestines, brains and the other unidentifiable detritus of years' worth of dissections fill a dozen wading pool-sized vats to the brim. With the veterinary department's incinerator long on the fritz, the stomach-turning, formaldehyde-drenched mass of animal carcasses and organs grows by the day. Similar...

If you have spent much time traveling around the United States, you likely have noticed that our infrastructure looks a bit worn and tired and in need of some refreshing. If you spend much time traveling around the world, however, you will notice that our infrastructure is shockingly bad. So bad that it's not an exaggeration to declare it a national disgrace, a global embarrassment and a massive security risk. Not too long ago, the infrastructure of the United States was the envy of the world.

PARIS — French President Francois Hollande is defending the record of his first year in office and promising to unveil a 10-year plan to invest 20 billion euros ($26 billion) in infrastructure, digital technology and clean energy. After a special Cabinet meeting Monday, his spokeswoman clarified that some of that money would come from projects already announced. She said the rest of the details would have to wait for the plan's announcement. Amid a stagnating economy and rising...

This time they stood in front of a D.C. bridge that will cost $661 million to replace, but the whole point was that they could have used about 10,000 different places in America as their backdrop for an example of something critical that's falling apart. The report card by the American Society of Civil Engineers showed the national infrastructure a single grade above failure, a step from declining to the point where everyday things simply stop working the way people expect them to. "When we're talking about infrastructure,...

Columnist Ezra Klein's challenge to the notion of American decline [" America in decline? Not likely ," news, May 18] omitted the obvious decline in the nation's man-made and natural infrastructure. Thoughtful Americans know that we face a staggering infrastructure deficit regarding our roads, bridges, water systems and waterways. Similarly, the losing battle to keep the Chesapeake Bay healthy, despite known remedies for achieving cleaner water inflows to the bay, is symptomatic of the nation's overall...

The Jan. 29 front-page article " A span of dreams — and fears " was astonishing. Our neighbor, Mexico, is building a 140-mile toll road over "a landscape of yawning ravines and sheer-sided ridges" known as the Devil's Backbone and including 62 tunnels and 135 bridges at a cost of $1.5 billion. How can Mexico possibly do that when Maryland's Intercounty Connector, a mere 18-mile toll road through the gentle pastureland of Montgomery County, cost $2.6 billion? Might I suggest that, even when we desperately need jobs...

As Congress debates how to meet the nation's long-term transportation needs, decaying roads, bridges, railroads and transit systems are costing the United States $129 billion a year, according to a report issued Wednesday by a professional group whose members are responsible for designing and building such infrastructure. Complex calculations done for the American Society of Civil Engineers indicate that infrastructure deficiencies add $97  billion a year to the cost of operating vehicles and result in...

Jerry N. Johnson, the new general manager of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission , takes over the agency at a time when it, like many utilities across the United States, is struggling to repair and replace its aging infrastructure . The WSSC is the nation's eighth-largest water and sewer utility, serving 1.8 million people in Prince George's and Montgomery counties. At current funding levels, WSSC officials have said, it would take about 200 years to replace suburban Maryland's underground pipes.

The United States is falling dramatically behind much of the world in rebuilding and expanding an overloaded and deteriorating transportation network it needs to remain competitive in the global marketplace, according to a new study by the Urban Land Institute. Burdened with soaring deficits and with long-term transportation plans stalled in Congress, the United States has fallen behind three emerging economic competitors — Brazil, China and India, the institute said. The report envisions a time...

The April 29 front-page article " Defense cuts prove a paradox for the left " missed an important point. Yes, as a "liberal," I have an abiding interest in diverting federal funds from developing and using bigger and better devices for killing people in faraway lands toward upgrading our aging infrastructure and toward feeding, healing, housing and educating the less fortunate among us. However, this may not necessarily require cutting Pentagon...

It was a quasi-disaster for people who fly and easy pickings for television crews working the surly airport crowds that seethed as thousands of flights were delayed for hours on end. By the weekend, however, the heads of those angry passengers rested on pillows at their intended destinations. Wall Street showed no great concern that commerce had been put at risk. The aviation system still worked despite cuts intended to save $200 million. It just didn't work as well as it could.

MIAMI — President Obama on Friday visited a tunnel project at the major port here to promote a new plan to rebuild the nation's roads, bridges and points of commerce — a series of measures that White House officials argue could appeal to business-minded Republicans. In a brief visit, Obama said hiring construction workers for "infrastructure" projects would help lower the nation's high unemployment rate — no industry has been harder hit than construction — and...

This time they stood in front of a D.C. bridge that will cost $661 million to replace, but the whole point was that they could have used about 10,000 different places in America as their backdrop for an example of something critical that's falling apart. The report card by the American Society of Civil Engineers showed the national infrastructure a single grade above failure, a step from declining to the point where everyday things simply stop working the way people expect them to. "When we're talking...

There is bipartisanship in Congress! House Republicans and Democrats agree they are not going to let the Obama White House cut defense spending by permitting any more reduction in excess military facilities. Fact: Nine years ago, the Air Force found more than 20 percent of its infrastructure was excess. The Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) made a cut of less than 1 percent. Since then, Air Force personnel have been cut by about 48,000 and the number of aircraft has dropped by 500....

President Obama's "Fix-It-First" program to repair bridges, proposed in his State of the Union address on Feb. 12, may be getting a test run in Afghanistan. Don't worry about the lack of money in this country that could limit fixing those "nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges" Obama mentioned. The Afghanistan Security Forces Fund and the Economic Support Fund for Afghanistan have roughly $6 billion in unobligated money from the past two years, enough to cover that...

All right-thinking people agree: America's infrastructure is in bad shape. The only debate is over how bad. Is our infrastructure "increasingly third-world" — per Slate's Jacob Weisberg — or a "national disgrace" and "global embarrassment" — as Barry Ritholtz suggested in a recent column for The Post ? Data seem to support this gloomy conventional wisdom. In the World Economic Forum's (WEF) latest Global Competitiveness Report , the United States' infrastructure ranked 23rd, behind that of...

This week's bold warning on infrastructure comes weighted with the sort of price tag that seems abstract to many taxpayers in a nation where a financial bailout costs $500 billion, a war is $113 billion a year, the annual deficit runs to $1 trillion and recent spending cuts amount to $110 billion. The cost of deficit reduction became real when people got their first paycheck this year and realized the payroll tax holiday was over. But experts said the reality of a failure to invest...

Hours after President Obama asked Congress to address "an aging infrastructure badly in need of repair," the gavel came down Wednesday on a House hearing at which committee members were told: ●The nation's infrastructure will require a lot more money. ●The federal gas tax should go up — maybe double — but isn't the ultimate answer. ●It's time to let states collect tolls on federal interstates. ●Americans eventually will pay for every mile they drive. ●And somebody needs to...

President Obama's State of the Union address presented an expanded vision of smart government to create jobs and revive the economy. Yet he lowered his sights on the single policy that would both jump-start the economy in the short term and create the conditions for long-term growth: infrastructure spending . Having tried several times to propose infrastructure bills of around $50 billion — or just 0.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)...