The Road Worriers

According to an organization whose members make money from building public-infrastructure projects, Virginia needs to spend a lot more money on public-infrastructure projects.

The American Society of Civil Engineers gives Virginia a grade of D+ for the condition of its roads, bridges, dams, water systems, schools, and so on. That puts Virginia slightly ahead of the national curve, which gets a D from the organization. It wants to see a five-year investment of $2.2 trillion.

Now, in certain regards we tend to agree with the assessment, at least concerning the commonwealth. The flooding of Battery Park offered a stark reminder that some systems have suffered years of neglect. Virginia also is running out of road-construction money. The state needs to raise the gasoline tax and peg it to inflation to correct for the erosion of its value over time. Certain school buildings need repair, and so on.

But it is worth remembering that after the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis two years ago, VDOT did a spot-check of hundreds of bridges, including those with what are considered "fracture-critical elements" whose failure could lead to a collapse. VDOT found no serious safety problems.

State residents also should bear in mind that Virginia has not exactly been miserly. Over the course of the past decade transportation spending grew five times as fast as population growth, after adjusting for inflation. Education spending grew four times as fast as enrollment. In some ways, the budgetary pressures now result from the spending spree then, because new construction adds to the maintenance bill downstream.

Just because a pharmaceutical company says Virginia needs to spend a lot more money on prescription drugs doesn't mean the need is pure fancy. It does mean, however, that the claim deserves to be scrutinized with a jaundiced eye.