RE:RE:RE:HydroQ to spemd 15B/year for 12 years to increase capacity Gabriel wrote: And the crumbling infrastructure (bridges, highways, roads, buildings of all sorts,..) at the provincial, municipal and federal levels.
The cost to the economy or society as it is referred to, of not intervening or of neglect (counterfactual it is called) is huge.
Illustration of the cost of neglect or lack of maintenance:
A stitch in time saves nine. An oil change is cheaper than changing the engine and less trouble too. Neglecting maintenance results in significantly more needed to fix the infrastructure and a much higher cost to the users (larger vehicle operation costs) and more pollution (higher consumption on rougher pavements for instance. The same analysis applies for bridges and buildings).
Illustration of the cost of lack of rehabilitation:
When an infrastructure has been neglected and has reached its service life, it needs to be rehabilitated. Otherwise the cost of not doing so can be huge. For instance, the cost of not rehabilitating a road that is past due has a huge cost to society; when a car hits say 100 potholes, something breaks and that has a cost of let's say $200. Under these assumptions every pothole that is hit by vehicle has a cost of two dollars, so if we have 10,000 vehicles hitting one single pothole, then the cost to society or the economy is $20,000 a day for one single pothole. Now the manifestation of a pothole means the road has reached its service life and it is likely there are much more than one pothole but hundreds. Figure the cost of not rehabilitating. This is a message to the federal and every provincial and municipal agency in the US and in Canada and equally one to the distinguished C-suite and every proud employee and shareholder of Aecon. This is our company and we have lots of work ahead.
Have a great WE everyone,
Gabs
Thank you Gabriel for the post. We may be converts here already, but the message is nonetheless appropriate and timely for the powers that be.
To revert to the stitch in time adage, an investment of $4B -$5B in the levees of NOLA might have mitigated much of the damage of Katrina,
which ended up costing hundreds of billions, not to mention the irreplacable loss of life and limb. The blame was shamefully pinned on the Army Corps of Engineers instead of the real culprits up top who make budgetary decisions.
Two decades later, in 2024, the backlog of unaddressed public infrastructure maintenance in the US is estimated to be $2.6 Trillion!
How many bridges have collapsed since?
In fairness to the Biden admin the issue was addressed in part in a couple of bills. But how much of it will be implemented, especially by another admin? I saw little mention of it in the debate nor in the public discourse since. Indeed the top honchos seem to be bent on distracting us by cats, dogs and geese as menu items.
When it comes to budgeting for MIC/Wars/GlobalHegemony versus spending on the welfare of people, the former always wins.
https://time.com/6977919/america-infrastructure/
And what does all of the above have to do with us in Canada? Well that might take a few more pages of harangue but let me point out that in our own supine indolence we are supporting two ugly, brutal wars causing untold death, destruction and carnage; in the name of what?
Cheers