U.S. Needs To Re-Think How It Goes About Its Infrastructure Planning
It’s winter; temperatures are in the teens; let’s talk baseball. While Ohio’s skies are filled with snowballs instead of baseballs this time of year, thoughts of perfect summer evenings at the ballpark will get us through current conditions. Talking baseball may even help improve the nation’s transportation conditions.
In baseball terms, the nation’s current transportation vision is south of the Mendoza line – the expression used to define incompetency. Ironically, the baseball slang “on the Interstate” denotes someone hitting so poorly – below .200 – that their batting average resembles an interstate highway marker, such as I-90, I-77 or I-70. According to the most-recent Country Infrastructure Capacity (CIC) survey, when it comes to the nation’s transportation leadership and vision, the U.S. is whiffing at the plate and shouldn’t even be traveling the interstate – perhaps a dusty, back road would be more like it.
In the annual survey of public- and private-sector executives involved in the country’s infrastructure market, the U.S. is headed to the minor leagues – as “it’s falling into a second-rate status in the infrastructure arena, becoming a country that does not attract top-flight expertise or resources to its infrastructure business.”
