Infrastructure and a ‘Do Nothing’ Generation

An August 22nd article in the Ottawa Citizen brought to light what anyone driving a sports car with a stiff suspension has known for years. Our infrastructure, built in the 1960s and earlier, is starting to fall apart. The article said that the Institute for Research on Public Policy claims that our national infrastructure requires 200 billion dollars in investment soon, or industry will be adversely affected. This is 72 billion dollars for new investments, and the remainder to repair existing routes, facilities, and equipment. I started this blog post then, and abandoned it in favour about writing about John McCain. I will eventually talk about his VP selection, but want to get both sides of the story so I'm not so negative. Today, the Ottawa Citizen had another article on the problem, and I decided to wrap this little rant up.

While that 200 billion figure covers roads, rail, water, power, and pretty much everything else you can imagine, it is still a number that is absolutely staggering. This is what happens when you let things get out of hand. Think about it for a moment – when was the last time you’ve seen potholes go unattended for months on end, or railway tracks being removed? When was the last time you’ve seen new power towers going up? Not an individual telephone pole being replaced, but the huge backbone towers that actually feed cities? Even at that, when’s the last time you’ve seen telephone poles being replaced before they are entirely rotted out?

I hate to rail on the boomers, but I am really getting sick of hearing stories like this. In my 25 years, all I have ever heard is how things are breaking down and wearing out. There is a sense of complacency that has settled in that has literally stopped growth in its tracks.

The last major highway to be built in Ontario was the 416, completed in 1999 (but mostly complete in 1996). It is only roughly 100km long, and nothing has been built in almost a decade. Contrast that to the 401, completed to a minimum of 4 lanes in 1968. Our investment in our roads has been lacking. Electronic Fuel Injection, the most current method of getting fuel into an engine, was invented by Bendix Corporation in 1957 for the AMC Rambler Rebel, and became truly modern in 1982 when Bosch invented the Mass Air Flow Sensor. Even in aviation, the 747, first in commercial use in 1970, is still the most popular jumbo jet, only now starting to be replaced by the Airbus A380. Contrast that to the mere 12 year reign of the 707, the 747’s predecessor.

Space travel has long been seen as the source of cutting edge technology, having provided us with Velcro and Tang. But the space shuttle was basically designed in 1977, and first flew in 1981. It replaced the Apollo Saturn V rocket, which flew from 1967-1973. We’re only now looking at replacing the shuttle, and the Orion rocket they intend to replace it with admittedly harkens back to the Saturn V days, and won’t be ready until at least 2014!

The last nuclear power plant to come online in Canada is now 15 years old, with new ones just now being planned. The situation is similar south of the border. Wind generators have been refined technologies for many years, but we still don’t use them. Hell, Jimmy Carter had solar panels on the roof of the White House in 1977 – why are we still burning coal and oil for power, and why are most of our hydroelectric dams aging mainstays? There has been little to no investment in the power infrastructure in North America in at least 20 years, and all the talk of fixing it after the blackout of 2003 did little.

Politically not much has changed in the last while either. Look at 3 of the last 4 US Presidents, arguably leaders of the free world. Reagan, Bush I, Bush II. In the last 28 years, the United States has been led by Presidents that could have otherwise been interchangeable, other than the 8 years under Clinton. Even counting Clinton’s time, in almost 30 years there have been no visionaries, no grand dream of going to the Moon like Kennedy, no dreams of peace in the Middle East and clean solar power for everyone like Carter. Hell, even Nixon opened relations with China! Everything has been status quo except for the few brief times that Reagan sat down with Gorbachev to work out our differences with the East, and as I’ve covered in another post, he did almost as much to damage our relationship with the East in his term.

But what about computers? People will surely ask that question, and they are right to ask. Computers have advanced by leaps and bounds in the last 25 years. But there are two caveats to that statement. Despite all of the processor speed increases, most home PCs are still based on 8086-style chipsets. Technology that while much faster than, is still based on a chip released in 1978. The Internet, heralded as a lifestyle-changer worldwide, is evolved from the ARPANET, created by the US military in 1969. So even there, innovation has been lacking. Progress – yes, new radical thinking – certainly not. Dual core processors and 64 bit computing will not bring us any closer to AI.

Where are the flying cars? Where’s the free cheap power that will unite mankind? And most importantly, where are the killer sentient robots bent on destroying humanity? The future is here, now, and the first decade of the 21st century is almost complete. As a society, we haven’t thought of very much of anything in at least 20 years. You could argue that it’s not one generation’s fault, as some people in charge were older, some younger, but a more or less 20 year span is still that. 20 years is a generation, no matter how you cut it.

My generation is only now coming into its own. Hopefully for our own sake, we have among us some minds that are far more innovative than the ones that have been running the show for the last 25 years. We face the greatest challenge thus far, automating the care and maintenance of our infrastructure. Because after the boomers all retire, there won’t be nearly enough people to try to take care of this setup the way we have been – especially if we inherit an infrastructure that is more than half a century old and starting to crumble. As with the oil problem, as with the environmental problem, as with the Cold War’s nuclear stockpile problem, we will inherit their mess, once again. Our nice shiny Blu-Ray discs and flat screen TVs will do us little good when the power is out because the power plants have long since broken down, and you can’t get to the next town because the roads are a crumbling mess, and even if they weren’t gasoline will have long since gone the way of the dodo bird. In short, I think the 200 billion is needed. Maybe more, so we can avoid this problem in the future.