The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion No, America’s infrastructure is not ‘crumbling’

Deputy opinion editor and columnist|
April 6, 2021 at 4:27 p.m. EDT
U.S. Interstate 90, also known as the Dan Ryan Expressway, under reconstruction in Chicago, on April 5. (Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

The United States covers 3.8 million square miles, with 95,471 miles of shoreline and about 12,000 miles of commercially navigable inland waterways; it soars from 282 feet below sea level in Death Valley to 20,310 feet above sea level at Mount Denali.

Knitting this vast and varied territory together are 2.7 million miles of paved roads, more than 500 commercial airports, more than 615,000 bridges, approximately 140,000 miles of freight railroad and more than 300 ports on the coasts, Great Lakes and inland waterways.