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Recent Editorials |
Bridges: On Further Inspection…by Sandy Ikeda
On a positive note, the state of New York comes out looking good, and Hawaii very, very bad, in an MSNBC article, "Late inspections of bridges put travelers at risk," where you can find the rankings of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, from worst to best, in terms of the percentage of bridges that are over 2 years overdue on inspections. The "top" states in this regard are: Hawaii, where at least 46.5 percent of all bridges went beyond two years;New York came in 46th, which is quite good, assuming the 2-years-late inspection criterion is the relevant one. (It's possible that it would be more efficient if they were inspected less often … who knows?) Interestingly, federal bridges came in second worst, at 35.3% overdue. My wife and I tried out the new $100K public toilet the city government just installed at Madison Square Park (on the Madison Avenue side near 23rd Street). Just as the New York Times article reported, and as I blogged in January, it takes a very long time to clean between uses — up to 90 seconds — and it leaves everything quite wet. I realize there's a trade-off between cleanliness and convenience, but it's hard to imagine New Yorkers being so patient. Also, there were no seat covers in the dispenser at the time.*** Clearly, some kinks need to be worked out. The New York Daily News reported last week that a state commission has approved congestion pricing. My impression has been that there's a momentum building in its favor, but I've learned from a dependable source that it's unlikely to pass the legislature any time soon because powerful political forces at the state level are strongly against it.*** In principle, using prices that reliably reflect scarcities in order to ration resources makes sense. But this just shows once again how politics trumps good policy, and that politics would probably interfere with the efficient operation of congestion pricing even were it implemented.
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