Complex, Costly, and Crumbling
How America’s infrastructure came to be – and what’s needed to save it.
The Road Taken
By Henry Petroski
Bloomsbury U.S. 2016, 336 pages
Rain gutters, asphalt, guardrails, and sidewalks may not be typical fare for leisurely contemplation, even for civil engineers. But trust Henry Petroski to make such material compelling. The Duke University civil engineering professor, prolific author, and longtime Prism columnist has done it before, devoting separate volumes to the lowly pencil and the toothpick. Now he calls our attention to the roads we travel and structures that support them. Readers will likely find themselves glancing out car windows at median paint lines and cement dividers; they may also pay closer attention to cracks on their local roads and bridges – and to the politics of public funding.
The Road Taken recounts the story of America’s infrastructure with an eye to its complexity, including political infighting, poor management, and soaring costs. The dismal state of U.S. infrastructure clearly undergirds this study: As the American Society of Civil Engineering has indicated through periodic report cards, the country’s roads, bridges, and rail lines are crumbling, consistently achieving grades that range from F to C. New technology, smart cars, and self-regulating bridges may excite public attention and government spending; yet the longer it takes to tackle mundane but crucial problems of potholes, uneven roads, and sagging bridges, “the more there will be to fill, resurface, and rebuild” – and the more it will cost. Indeed, if our highways deteriorate far below their current state, repairs could require every budgeted dollar just to restore the mediocre, unsatisfactory state, with no hope of advancing the technology. Neglecting ongoing needs, writes Petroski, means “shortchanging the well-being and optimism of future generations and the prospect of economic growth.”
While dire, the situation is not hopeless. Maintenance is an ongoing process and one that urgently requires awareness, responsibility, and advocacy, but “the country has pulled itself out of infrastructure ditches before,” Petroski believes. Thus, the book’s historical overview serves to present examples both cautionary and inspirational “of how a wide variety of roads and bridges have been planned, designed, financed, built, maintained, and managed.”
To this end, the opening chapters look back to America’s move from stone-and brick-paved roads to asphalt, and next to attempts to standardize traffic signals, with debates over color, order, and presentation. Before the 1920s, roadside signs were unregulated, we learn. Local automobile clubs often vied to promote their own routes and businesses, resulting “in as many as eleven different sets of signs on a single highway.” In 1958, Oregon resisted changing the color of its roads’ center line from yellow to white; threatened with the loss of federal funding, the states capitulated – only to reclaim yellow under new regulations in 1971. The handling – and mishandling – of several bridge projects; the financing of the New York subway system; and the choice between asphalt and concrete highways are all explored at length. Such case studies can offer guidance for future work, the author asserts: “A great deal of wisdom can be derived from what has been tried, and how and why certain choices have been made. It behooves us to learn from the process, if not the product.”
Even as The Road Taken alerts us to issues large and small, it provides an engaging, eloquent exploration of civil engineering. As is characteristic of his other work, Petroski enlivens his text with his own experiences, whether as a child sailing paper boats in the rain gutters of Brooklyn or as an adult hugging Durham’s 108B exit and eyeing the “bent, torn, and twisted” guardrail, evidence of other motorists’ struggles with this tight ramp. Throughout the book, poet Robert Frost’s famous “The Road Not Taken” serves as a framing structure, with lines used for each of the chapter headings. Like the narrator of that poem, America has reached a fork in the road and must make an important decision. The path taken will, as in Frost’s words, make all the difference.
Review by Robin Tatu
Robin Tatu is Prism’s senior editorial consultant.