In this year's State of the Union Address, President Obama laid forth his claim that we need to reinvest in America's infrastructure to repair our nation's "crumbling roads and bridges," and he would help facilitate that process by signing an executive order to "[clear] away the red tape that slows down too many construction projects."
What he did not address is that infrastructure goes far beyond roads and bridges. While those are an integral part of our nation's heritage from the 20th century, they are not the only problem that we face. In comparison to most developed nations, America seems built more for cars than for people. Much of this has to do with the pace and way in which our country was settled. With such a large continent of mostly arable land, rich in natural resources, America was not so easily established as other, smaller nations. It took nearly 200 years to reach the Pacific Ocean in any meaningful way (in terms of the number of settlers), and it wasn't until Manifest Destiny became the meme du jour that we decided it was God's divine will that we expand our borders until we met the ocean. This plan didn't include many Mexicans or Native Americans.
When it became clear toward the end of the 19th century that we had spread ourselves too far apart to support slow travel from one end of the country to the other, we began a series of massive transportation projects, the culmination of which came about in the 1950s with the Interstate Highway System designed to service all major U.S. cities.
And this is where America split from the rest of the world, where trains were the primary source of travel between great distances. We did something wholly American and went our own way by creating the American Auto Industry. Bound and determined to put a car in every driveway, we began expanding roads, highways, and bridges to meet our growing desire for independence from relying on the schedules of others.
Once flying became the clearly easier method of transcontinental transportation, we built airports for commercial, and later passenger flight purposes. We led the world in innovation when it came to building these airports, but maintained that our Interstates were the crown jewel of our nation's great transportation system.
I don't know what crack pipe these guys were smoking, but give me nicer airports and vehicles in which I can sleep to my destination any day over sitting my ass in traffic for two hours on the way to work in the morning.
Living in Los Angeles, I have become accustomed to my visiting friends' questions:
"Why is there no transportation to and from the airport?"
"What an inconvenient design for an airport...is there an easier way to get between terminals?"
"Is this place always under construction?"
"Why is it impossible to get any cell phone service, here?"
"Why is there no free WiFi?"
The truth is that I can provide them with few justifiable answers. Most people will admit that LAX is one of the worst airports in the nation by nearly every measurable standard. It is depressing to realize that the city that gives us Hollywood, known for the most lavish parties and awards shows, greets its domestic and international arrivals with such a monument to poor design and construction, with little in the way of the very amenities that our inner celebrity has come to expect from L.A.
Instead, every terminal seems like a never ending series of hallways, punctuated by longer hallways filled not with a variety of food and beverage options, but construction signs, poor cell phone signal, and inadequate seating to accommodate the fifth busiest airport in the U.S.
For as much time as LAX seems to spend under construction, one would think it might improve over time. One would be incorrect.
While LAX is not alone in its suckery, it is a glaring example of how little we think of our nation's infrastructure, which all seems to be designed more for utility than either aesthetics or convenience. Where other nation's developed transportation that took topography, long-term survival, and continued renewal into account, the American approach was to plod along, blast through any obstacle, and plop down a road or an airport wherever it was easiest.
What was once the crown jewel of personal travel has become anything but, with actually crumbling roads in most of the South and Midwest, rest areas better known for blowjobs and being closed than actually providing a break from driving, and airports where nothing is convenient, everything is overpriced, and flights are often overcrowded, late on departing and arriving, and staffed with employees who seem to have been trained by angry proboscis monkeys.
If we are to confront our infrastructure problems head on, we must do so in an organized and decisive manner, refusing to tolerate the whining of officials who claim they'll lose money in parking fees if we extend public transportation all the way to the airport (I'm lookin' at you, LAX), refusing to tolerate the obstruction of idiot conservatives who are determined not to build high-speed rail systems (and thus not creating new jobs), and certainly not tolerating rich assholes who don't want public transportation expanded because it will give poor people and minorities access to their posh surroundings.
The time has come to confront these roadblocks with jackhammers and dynamite so we can finally begin to fix what is so very clearly broken.
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