New Jersey Rail Nightmare: A Sign of the Infrastructure Crisis to Come

The federal government’s failure to invest in the country’s infrastructure has become such a significant concern to professional planners that both national and international organizations regularly rate the U.S. among the worst developed countries in terms of its maintenance of roads, ports, rail transit, and the electrical grid. Even so, barring major power outages or high-profile bridge collapses, the country’s crumbling infrastructure rarely penetrates the consciousness of the general public.

That may be about to change, however, in one of the nation’s most critically important metropolitan areas. Commuters who travel from New Jersey to New York via the rail tunnels under the Hudson River learned last week that the four tracks under the river, which currently carry some 400,000 people to and from Manhattan every weekday, are in need of serious repairs. The two tunnels they pass through were badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and they will need to be shut down for a year at a time.

Continue reading at The Fiscal Times.