Rhode Island “Leads” America’s Trend of Infrastructure Failure
Emily Pollock posted on September 06, 2018 |
Infrastructure failure can be dramatic, as in the bridge collapse at Florida International University that killed seven earlier this year. But it can also happen slowly, as is occurring with a significant percentage of America’s infrastructure.
Rated by their condition, 7 percent of U.S. roadways are in poor condition, 9 percent of its bridges are structurally deficient, and 17 percent of its dams have a “high hazard potential,” according to a recent report.
The report, compiled by 24/7 Wall St, includes data on what percentage of dams are at “high hazard risk,” what percentage of roads are in poor condition, what percentage of bridges are “deficient,” and how much each state spends per year, per driver. The company created the ranking by combining data on bridges and roadways from the Federal Highway Administration’s report “Highway Statistics 2016,” data on dams from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams, and data on highway spending from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 Annual Survey of State Government Finance. The final index used all this data to determine which states are winning and losing the battle against infrastructure decay—and how much money they’re spending to do it.
The states with the largest proportion of infrastructure in poor condition are (in order) Rhode Island, Hawaii,…