13 months ago we were playing volleyball and all of the sudden my friends' and my cell phones were going off. Parents were calling us to see if we were alright. Odd it seemed at first, but that's when the highway 35W bridge collapsed.
Well 13 months later the bridge has reopened and now traffic will be seriously alleviated. However, such a quick rebuilding of a major highway over the country's largest river got me thinking;
"Why the hell is it taking so long to rebuild the WTC?"
I've speculated on this before and pointed out that if this was the 1940's, despite archaic technology, those towers would have been rebuilt in the same amount of time it took to rebuild this bridge. Of course political, environmental, insurance and other factors have gotten in the way. But it does present an interesting dichotomy.
It takes a private sector firm 13 months to rebuild a major piece of infrastructure under budget and ahead of schedule. It takes what can only be described as government and political bureaucracy 7 years to build absolutely nothing. If there is a lesson in the perils of government and politics, this is it.
In the meantime, perhaps you New Yorkers out there could use a little consulting help from us hicks in Minnesota?
No comments:
Post a Comment