Should Infrastructure be Politically Controlled?

All this shareholder idea is doing is creating a highly complicated second political system JUST for road maintenance. Rather than fancy tolls and such, set up semi-independant transportation ministers and use some of the taxes from licenses, or gasoline. So much simpler. But as noted, you don't avoid the political element.

You could try to pass a law requiring maintenance to be funded before building a new project. But then if there are bad times, and people let maintenance languish a bit, they're going to run up such a tab they won't want to build anything.

A method that works on the small scale is the media. In a few towns I've lived in, the local paper would once a month shame the municipal government into filling in potholes. Similarily, maybe an advocacy group could hire a few civil inspectors to shame/scare the governments into action.

How ya doing, buddy?

Brady/Mikey, quit arguing about this shit. If you had a time machine, any rational person would've spent the money to repair that bridge. In addition to saving lives (and I think economists estimated people are willing to spend ~$1mill/American life to protect), repairing the bridge would be cheaper than replacing it will be. Plus, there's the opportunity cost from having the bridge out: people spending longer commuting, things delayed, etc. etc.

Don't chase safety pies in the sky, point taken. But Brady's not even asking for any more effort looking for problems! You spend on the best practicable technology, and make the effort to meet your own maintenance and safety standards and generally keep an eye out.

There's nowhere I can't reach.