Reply #7: Politicians are short-term creatures. [View All]

[Igel]

Maintenance on older projects gets more and more expensive; and nobody wants to cough up the cash or issue bonds unless there's political gain in it--usually if a bridge is about to collapse, that's enough (they can blame the previous administration). Otherwise, it's boring, and doesn't win elections.


Even then, you're right: nobody wants to fully fund maintenance. Again, it's boring, and it eats up budgets. No elected official wants to say "Vote for me. I have a record of allocating sufficient funds to maintain what my predecessors built."

It's going to get worse, and may never get much better. They'll just fix things 28 seconds before they catastrophically fail.