Commuting woes in New York a sign of bigger problems nationwide

Frustrated commuters traveling from their New Jersey homes to offices in New York City were waylaid again today, the fifth time in the last six commuting days by an aging infrastructure in need of repair.

Key to the delays are old overhead cables used to power trains. The lines are maintained by Amtrak and essentially leased (along with the tracks trains run on) for about $100 million a year. Amtrak says they know what the problem is but don’t have the funds to fix it properly.

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And there’s the problem. Infrastructure, not just in the north east, but coast to coast, costs money. Lots of it. The problems in and around the country’s largest city are just a few of the many examples of failing infrastructure. Yahoo Finance’s Aaron Task says, “we have failing bridges, we have pot holes. The World Economic Forum ranks us 13th in the world in infrastructure and that’s down from number seven in 2008...we just don’t have the political will in this country to do anything about it.”

Yahoo Finance Columnist Rick Newman won’t go quite that far, arguing, “When the tunnels actually collapse they get fixed,” though he admits, “That’s a lousy way to manage things.”

Still, his point is that while there are problems, there are also large parts of our nation’s infrastructure that are in good repair.

Newman points to the migration of Americans back toward cities and new, though not yet implemented, ways to pay for big projects (like a public/private infrastructure bank) that will lead to new projects when they are needed.

A case in point is the new Tappan Zee Bridge 20 miles north of New York City. The original span has been the focus of a number of fear inducing headlines claiming collapse was a realistic threat. And so a new bridge is being built to the tune of $3.9 billion. While the federal government has kicked in $1.6 billion to the project the exact payment plan for the rest of it has yet to come into focus.

But back to that commuting headache making headlines this week. Amtrak says it needs more money to fix their problems even as NJ Transit pumps $100 million into its coffers each year.

“Amtrak can not invest the way it ought to,” Newman believes, “because it has to keep running unpopulated rail lines as it goes to some member of congress's district. It’s just inefficient.”

And so one of the busiest public transit arteries in the country remains clogged and the timeline for unclogging it remains murky at best.

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