New York City, Crumbling Infrastructure and Climate Change

Spending a long weekend in New York State and Long Island, I of course had to take a close look at some of the infrastructure serving this urban metropolis. And while it is impressive that the subway system, most of which was built in the early 1900s, is still functional, I could not help but think that the American infrastructure is in a very dire state. For part of the trip, we stayed in relatively wealthy suburb in Long Island. Yet, the neighbourhood was full of tilted electricity poles, roads full of potholes and had a run-down train station. This made me wonder how the infrastructure systems in the less well-off parts of the country look like.

According to the latest ASCE Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, America’s infrastructure scores an overall grade of C-. Some sectors are performing even worse: roads score a D+, bridges a C, drinking water a C and public transit a D. The numbers behind these scores tell the concerning facts: more than 43,000 US bridges are classified as structurally deficient, one in every five miles of highway is in poor condition, and water systems nationwide are experiencing millions of leaks and breaks every year.

How did America get into this situation? Part of it can be explained by the simple fact that America saw a large post-WWII infrastructure boom, which is now in urgent need for repairs or renewal. At the same time, I am currently reading Dan Wang’s book ‘Breakneck’ who argues that the situation can also be explained by the fact that America is run by lawyers (contrary to China being run by engineers), which are very good at stopping projects and are obsessed with regulations. The outcome of is sluggish infrastructure development. While Dan Wang’s argument is of course too simplistic, the truth is that America does not have a good track record anymore to deliver infrastructure projects.   

Th country infrastructure situation is bad in itself, but climate change is like to make this even worse. It is inevitable that the current state of the infrastructure is exacerbating the impacts of extreme weather events and other climate-related hazards. This has been a growing body of recent literature that has illustrated how the asset age is a proxy for failure during weather extremes. Yet, in most of our modelling work, we do not take this into consideration. In fact, we often have to assume that all asset of the same class (all highway or all electricity lines) would function the same way during extreme weather events, and in fact often assume they function as if they were recently built. Just walking around America makes you question that assumption.

The infrastructure sector in the USA is therefore facing a twin challenge of renewing its infrastructure base while make the infrastructure ready for worsening weather conditions the coming decades. Doing so is, of course, not straight forward if the C-word (climate change) cannot be mentioned in national strategies about infrastructure. Luckily, things are still happening more locally. For instance, in NYC, I saw this poster to make the port area (including the waterfront and ferry system) climate-proof. And this is much needed. The NOAA Sea Level Rise viewer indicates that even a 3-foot rise (roughly 0.9 meters) puts major infrastructure, subway entrances, and residential neighbourhoods at risk of permanent inundation or frequent flooding.

My trip to NYC was a stark reminder that climate change cannot be seen separate from the wider infrastructure renewal challenge. And in fact, there are also opportunities to use this moment to rethink how climate change can be better embedded in infrastructure design. Whether this will happen is another question.