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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (886211)	9/8/2015 11:08:38 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577030

I saw it when it aired. But it doesn't change one word of my post. CBS news comes from the same political perspective as you. You know, that echo chamber thing CJ is always going on about.

To: tejek who wrote (886211)	9/9/2015 11:26:25 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577030

...Each year state transportation agencies provide the federal government with comprehensive data on highway and bridge conditions. Highway quality is measured by a surface roughness index. The lower the index score, the better the quality of the road. Roads with index scores below 95 are considered to be in good condition, while higher index scores below 170 are acceptable. The most recent data on highway quality is for the year 2012. The percentage of urban highways classified as either good or acceptable was about 80 percent in 2012, down about 5 percentage points from 10 years earlier. Some of the decline may reflect a postponement of maintenance during the Great Recession. Almost 97 percent of rural highways were classified as either good or acceptable in 2012. This is about the same as 10 years earlier. Even with the recent quality drop for urban highways, a high percentage of our highways is in good or acceptable condition. These figures mask the variation in road quality across states. For example, in 2012, almost 80 percent of Georgia’s urban highways were in good condition — the highest in the country — while about 15 percent of California’s urban highways were in good condition — the lowest in the country. Obviously, highway usage, weather conditions, and the quality of transportation agencies influence these figures. Using state level quality figures, there is no statistical change in average urban and rural road quality over the 10-year period. Taking a longer-term perspective, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago examined the quality of the interstate highway system for the period from 1980 to 2006. Using surface roughness index data provided by the government, they find the system’s road surface has become smoother and less deteriorated since the mid-1990s. Transportation agencies report bridges as either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. A structurally deficient bridge is not considered unsafe, but it does imply a potential reduction in its load-carrying capacity and requires maintenance. A functionally obsolete bridge does not mean it fails to meet current design standards. It may simply mean that traffic flows over the bridge are more than expected. The quality of bridges in the United States has improved. Using the most recent data, in 2014, 4.2 percent of bridges were classified as structurally deficient, down from 5.7 percent 10 years earlier. There has been little change in the percentage of functionally obsolete bridges over this time span... thegazette.com There are certainly some number of unsafe bridges in America, but the problem is not getting worse. It’s actually getting better, as Chris Edwards of Cato points out. This chart shows the percentage of American bridges rated “structurally deficient”by the Federal Highway Administration — it’s dropping. Okay, so but that’s still 10 percent of bridges — 63,000 spans out of about 600,000 bridges in America. Still a crisis, right? Not really. It sounds scary that 10 percent of America’s bridges are deficient (that’s about 63,000 out about about 600,000), but what does “structurally deficient” actually mean? It doesn’t indicate any particular risk of failure, just that the bridge rates a 4 or below on the FHA’s condition-rating index, which means it has “advanced section loss, deterioration, spalling or scour” or something worse (there’s another ratings system that’s two decades old that they sometimes use, too). But if it’s rated 2, 1, or 0, the bridge is closed or considered for closure. So it’s not clear we’re running serious risks — which is why bridge collapses are really rare. Read more at: nationalreview.com