President Donald Trump is preparing to put forward a massive infrastructure spending bill, to the delight of big government statists in both parties looking to pay off their respective constituent groups under the guise of repairing America’s supposedly-crumbling infrastructure.
The data, however, suggests that politicians who claim that America’s infrastructure is crumbling are either woefully misinformed or lying to you. Michael Sargent, policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, tweeted the following research:
Here are the main takeaways from the graphs that Sargent posted:
- The percentage of “structurally deficient” bridges in the country declined from over 20 percent in 1992 to slightly below 10 percent in 2015.
- The percentage of miles traveled by vehicles on roads deemed “not acceptable” slightly declined from nine percent in 2000 to eight percent in 2008, while the percentage on roads deemed as “good” increased from 48 percent in 2000 to 57 percent in 2008.
- The percentage of airport runways deemed as poor declined from four percent in 2004 to two percent in 2016.
Other research further proves Sargent’s assertion, as The Daily Wire has previously reported:
The Heritage Foundation cited a Federal Highway Administration report that found “that the percentage of vehicle miles traveled on the national highway system with ‘good’ ride quality increased from 48 percent in 2000 to 60 percent in 2010, while the share with ‘acceptable’ ride quality grew from 91 percent to 93 percent.” This is in line with the Cato Institute stating in 2014, “the average smoothness of our roads has increased every year.”
Additionally, according to the Department of Transportation, the percentage of roads in 2012 deemed as “acceptable” was 80.3 percent and 83.3 percent when measured by vehicle miles traveled.
While there are clearly some aspects of the nation’s infrastructure that are in need of repair, it’s hardly the dire crisis that politicians would have you believe. But politicians need to stoke that kind of fear in order to give them an excuse to fund new projects that give them free media attention.
Such projects may inflate the egos of politicians, but it will also cause the debt to worsen as America heads closer and closer toward fiscal insolvency.