In a normal world, infrastructure damage with an impact as large as this would be fixed in a week or two. For anyone not familiar with the east coast of the US, this is the north-south corridor which runs from Miami, Florida to the Canadian border in Maine. There are alternative routes for through traffic (namely the NJ Turnpike) but diverted traffic is going to be a nightmare while we wait for this to be repaired.
Everyone loves to drag their feet when it comes to building infrastructure, yet "build more infrastructure" is pretty bipartisan.
Look at California's high speed rail, they're practically begging voters to make them stop at this point because they just don't want to build the damn thing, so they put poison pill after poison pill in.
Its so short-sighted, do they truly think that there will be no consequences? That america will be the big thing, if they let it decay into rubbish?
I was reading the Strong Towns book recently, and Charles Mahron made the argument that America probably cannot even pay for all this infrastructure even if it wants to, hence why dense, walkable cities are so important even from a libertarian POV.
But the thing is: they just don't want to even if the infrastructure god descended from the sky and gave the US infinite funds, and if that's the case, why the fuck do we build a ton of sprawling expensive infrastructure, and worse, sprawling expensive infrastructure that we are going to treat as DISPOSABLE? I know the answer, something something capitalism and contradictions.