Infrastructure: Has America 'Had its Day'?

"To my American readers: please do not get too angry with me when I say this, but the rapidity of the deterioration of your country's infra structures often reminds me of an extensive tour of the Soviet Union I undertook in 1986 - when I saw for myself, in places such as industrial Ukraine and Siberia and St Petersburg, that the Soviet Union had already had its day. For just as Bill and I were having our grim conversation early that Friday morning - and unknown to either of us at the time - the heart of the capital of the most powerful nation on earth, less than a mile from where we stood, had been plunged into the kind of chaos one might envisage in, say, New Delhi on a very, very bad day.

Because of the temperature, an underground train had earlier derailed as a result of what was described as a 'heat-buckle' on the tracks. Two separate fires on the subway system were then triggered that morning by faulty 'stud bolts'. Terrified, sweaty commuters sprinted up stationary escalators while, from above, all they could hear was ambulance, police and fire sirens zigzagging frantically around them.

In the meantime, a switch in an electrical sub-station sizzled out, cutting power throughout central Washington - including, yes, the White House. 'It was like each man for himself . . . like a third world country,' next day's Washington Post quoted 34-year-old David Zaidain, 'a city planner who was stunned by the level of anarchy he encountered while walking to work', as saying. Pedestrians were struck by cars at junctions where traffic lights were not working (although, miraculously, nobody was killed).

That one fused switch alone left 12,000 customers - which, in power company terminology, can mean one family house or a block of offices with thousands of workers - without power, the very prospect of which sent wealthy Washingtonians scurrying to book cool rooms or suites at the Four Seasons.

Most were not so lucky: every day, according to the Galvin Electricity Initiative, half a million Americans spend at least two hours without power, at an annual cost to the nation of at least $150bn."