The Dire States Tour, Dan McNichol

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• Country’s Infrastructure Is Crumbling, Outdated, Author Says

  Dan McNichol is a best-selling author and an award-winning journalist, focusing especially on the country’s transportation infrastructure and engineering issues.

  To bring attentnion to these critical infrastructure issues, McNichol is currently traveling around the country in a 1949 Hudson on what he calls the “Dire States Tour.”

  McNichol defined the nation’s infrastructure as “everything that you imagine connecting all of us together. If government is what we do together, infrastructure is what we build together.”

  He explained that everyone — whether its an individual family or a large manufacturing facility — are tapping into the same network.

  “There’s the grid that carries electricity, but there’s also the massive, overall infrastructural grid,” he said. “There’s roads, there’s bridges, there’s heavy rail, there’s light rail and transit. There’s levies and waterways. There’s schools and parks. And all that adds up to 16 different categories of infrastructure that are highly interdependent and interconnected.”

  The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Report Card gives the U.S. infrastructure a grade of “D+.”

  McNichol said wryly that it’s a slight improvement over a previous grade of “D.” The ASCE, he said, has been around since 1852 and is comprised of more than 140,000 engineers.

  “They’re the stewards of our infrastructure,” he said. “They are culpable. They take an oath. They are responsible for making sure that our infrastructure is as functional as possible.”

  The report card is a way to simplify the issue for the general public, but it represents the very real, complex problem of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. McNichol said he thinks people should all be concerned.

  “Unless you’re not worried about national security, unless you’re not worried about the quality of your life or the income that you bring in,” he said.

  Not only is the country’s infrastructure falling into disrepair, he said the U.S. is also trailing behind other countries in investment in these crucial systems.

  “We have dropped steadily and quickly in the worldwide infrastructural categories. Our total ranking has dropped from sixth to something like 26^th, and that’s in the last five, 10 years. You could just watch our ranking fall” McNichol said. “That matters even more, as you can imagine, because of the global economy we find ourselves in. And where China is investing in their infrastructure because they have to catch up, to our other side is Europe, which is acting like one country … and those European countries are improving their infrastructure. They have a whole different culture of maintaining their infrastructure. And we’re now competing with less.”

  A caller who identified himself as Mike from Milwaukee referred to the U.S. as “the richest Third World country in the world.” McNichol said he couldn’t agree more.

  But he said it doesn’t have to be that way. McNichol left listeners with this advice.

  “Give a ‘dam’ about your infrastructure. Find out what is ailing your town – you probably already know. And then figure out the solution, what is a possible cure? And then find the leadership. It could be your department of public works chief, it could be you, it could be the mayor … And then find out how to fix it. Hold those leaders accountable, but inform them, work with them. Don’t just blame them, or just ask them to do something or gripe, get involved with the solution. And I think it becomes a really powerful experience.”

  McNichol is speaking on the Universit of Wisconsin-Madison campus on Monday, Nov. 4^th. The event is free and open to the public.