On Aging Infrastructure

(Photo: CA) Originally posted 7/9; Click the conversation for more.

UPDATED (7/10): The update.


ORIGINAL POST (7/9): The bill to fix the huge sinkhole at Central Station that threatened the city's Amtrak service will be shared between the city and Canadian National Railway, according to the Commercial Appeal.

But it remains to be seen how much each side will pay. An excerpt:

The hole forced Amtrak to bypass Central Station and charter buses to cart passengers to an offsite location for boarding. Passengers coming into Memphis also had to be taken by bus to the train station.

"It does cost us between $4,000 and $5,000 a day for the charter buses and overtime for employees," said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari.

The materials are in place and a contractor has been identified, but among the details to be hammered out are how the cost will be split between CN and the city, and when work will begin, Jefferson said.

That's a crucial detail for Amtrak, which had threatened last month to discontinue service to Memphis if the hole wasn't repaired soon.

CN owns the tracks. The city owns the land.

Yet, this was an infrastructure issue generations in the making.

And here's the question that much of the nation faces with aging infrastructure: what do you do when it finally breaks down?

How much of the city's infrastructure has reached its shelf life? I'm not suggesting neglect. There are decisions to be made about when to do repairs or maintenance.

Homeowners face the same decision.

We know things break down eventually and there will be a cost to repair them when we first notice. But more than likely, repair decisions are delayed until the last possible moment (or completely avoided until they are someone else's problem) because we feel that the money for repairs could be better utilized elsewhere.

That makes short-term sense because the longer the maintenance/repair goes unheeded the more it will cost to fix.

We tend to learn that the hard way.