If you ever needed proof of how our infrastructure is falling apart, the Wall Street Journal has an exhaustive, thoughtful, extremely well-crafted project out today that does just that. The Journal examined the state of Interstate 95, and, boy, is it Not Good.
Based on an analysis of numerous data sets, a team from the Journal examined how I-95 is failing with traffic jams, bumpy stretches of road, bottlenecks, and the number of fatalities along the highway.
Auto accident fatalities have been on the rise in recent years. Along the heavily-congested I-95, traffic jams cost trucking companies money while also driving people into a frenzy.
“I believe it all relates to congestion,” James Wolfe, district secretary for Florida Department of Transportation District 6, told the Journal. “That changes driving behavior. People aren’t patient.” Wolfe’s district includes Miami-Dade County, which experiences a fatal accident at eight times the rate of all interstates, the Journal found.
Amid all the promises of what an automotive future might look like, the Journal’s project—which you should read entirely here—is a well-timed example of how much we should be spending to alleviate the stress of an unkept highway, but aren’t.
It bears repeating, again and again, we’re spending trillions of dollars less than we should to keep our infrastructure intact. It’s impossible for any of us to ignore, and yet the conditions remain.