When a train jumped the tracks this past week at New York’s Penn Station, the seemingly minor accident led to a cascade of exasperating delays for hundreds of thousands of commuters.
When a flood forced authorities to condemn a one-lane, century-old bridge in rural Ozark, Mo., it was no less frustrating for the residents and business owners cut off from their shortest route into town.
The two episodes highlight a reality about the U.S. transportation system — it is aging, congested and so vital that when things go wrong, big and costly disruptions can result for which there is no quick fix.
Though President Donald Trump has promised a $1 trillion infrastructure-rebuilding program, not all of that may go toward transportation. Even then, it would fall well short of the many trillions needed to fix the country’s web of roads, bridges, railways, subways and bus stations.
The commuter train in New York derailed because of a weakened railroad tie. No one was seriously injured. But the incident shut down eight of the station’s 21 tracks, disrupting Amtrak service in the Northeast from Boston to Washington, as well as delaying commuter trains in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for the better part of a week.
Business meetings were canceled, ballgames, dinners and doctor’s appointments missed, and commuters fumed.
Lawyer Dominic Boone, who travels into New York from New Jersey, complained that because he arrived late to the office and had to leave early to catch a different train, he lost 10 hours of work for which he could have billed clients.
“They should have been working on Penn Station forever ago,” Boone said. “As a nation, we should be spending more on our crumbling infrastructure.”
The disruption was only a brief example of the frustration travelers could face if the region can’t find a way to replace a pair of deteriorating, overcrowded, century-old rail tunnels that run under the Hudson River and connect New York and New Jersey.
The tunnels, which were severely damaged in Superstorm Sandy in 2012, could cost more than $20 billion to replace. But the money has yet to be lined up. And construction, whenever it begins, may take more than a decade.
The Penn Station derailment came less than two weeks after another one there, caused by a misaligned track.
And it happened just days after motorists in Atlanta were forced to begin taking long, bumper-to-bumper detours because a fire collapsed an Interstate 85 overpass linking the city to some of its biggest suburbs. Arson — not aging steel and concrete — is suspected there. It could take until mid-June to repair the highway.
Earlier this year, a cracked steel beam forced the closing of a major bridge between Pennsylvania and New Jersey for 1 1/2 months.
