California costal highway cries out for more attention to this nation’s infrastructure

According to an Associated Press article titled Chunk of Calif. coastal highway falls into Pacific “Engineers on Thursday were working to figure out when they'll be able to reopen a stretch of California coastal highway that collapsed into the ocean, blocking traffic to the scenic Big Sur region.”  “A 40-foot section of Highway 1 crumbled just after 5 p.m. Wednesday following several days of rainy weather. The entire southbound lane is gone, and the soil under the northbound lane also was giving way.” 

It should be well known that things like this happen over a number of years and nothing this dramatic occurs within a blink of an eye but it should also be known that there were indications long before the road collapsed.  Each individual with this knowledge passed it on and too no action which could have avoided this.  The real crime would have been if there had been lives lost because of it.  There is such a charge as negligence and every elected official is guilty of this when it comes to our crumbling infrastructure.  How many lives must be lost before we begin to place rebuilding our roads and bridges at the top of our list.  Not to mention all of the jobs this would create and how much more quickly the unemployment numbers will fall.  This is a no-brainer but seems to escape those elected for the expressed purpose of job creation.

It is time to put aside the desire to keep one’s elected position or which party is better than the other, it’s time to force our political leaders to grow up and hold them accountable for the actions that they take or do not take.  We all know that media favors controversy and they are convinced that ratings are closely tied to this concept.  The more controversy that they can report the better their rating but there comes a time when the bottom line must take a back seat to the preservation of human life.