Prime Example of the Sorry State of Nation's Infrastructure & Toll System

I landed in this great country just about twenty years ago on 4th of July, 1989. I am proud to make United States of America my new home since then and even prouder to be American citizen since 1995. One thing that continues to bother me for past few years is that I believe America is traversing towards a path of decline.

There is no better example than the Washington-New York I-95 corridor to illustrate the sorry state of our nation's infrastructure. I just traveled through the hodgepodge of I-95 that consists of New Jersey Turnpike, Delaware Turnpike and I-95 through these namesake states and a state of Maryland on my way from New Jersey to northern Virginia to visit a friend. As I had traveled through this corridor several times in my early years in United States, it brought back some good memories of my early life.

One thing that continues to baffle me is the short-sightedness or rather a lack of vision from the leaders of the current generations. It will be twenty years for me in the United States next weekend and unfortunately I just witnessed that during these twenty years, the most important corridor of our great country has seen no expansion at all. Washington-New York I-95 corridor connects the capital of the world's only superpower to the undisputed financial capital of the world, however, much of the stretch remains two to three lane highway where as only small parts of it are much more than that. It is really a pity for a country like United States that we do nothing in over twenty years to such a critical artery of our country when many emerging countries are rolling out new infrastructure projects like there is no tomorrow.

To make matters worse on this corridor or even a thing that is solely responsible for creating unforgiving congestion is a mere existence of a toll system. It just seems so backward. This is certainly a debatable matter due to issues such as costs and fairness. At a high level, is it really necessary to have such a toll system? It appears that only vision-lacking leaders can create or nurture such a system and selfish or unintelligent people can support such system. Are we really a country made of such people? There still are smart as well as fair ways to recoup the costs of building infrastructure (or even milk that infrastructure as many of our leaders like to) than simply clogging up major arteries by placing tolls at multiple places. Well, a human body takes food only from one place and not multiple places.

The prior generations had a vision to create such great interstate highway system in 1950s where as the later generations have done nothing but use it and abuse it with no respect to preserving and growing its legacy. Population grew meaningfully during the last 50 years, however, our infrastructure did not keep up with it at all. As a result, our nations' infrastructure appears overused and dilapidated, if not crumbling. United States receiving a "D" grade from American Society of Civil Engineers only confirms that fact.

The end result is that we are paying a big price for it in form of a lack of "real" increase in our standard of living. It simply breaks my heart to travel on a same two-lane highway as it was twenty years ago between New York and Washington, a lifeblood of United States of America.
Much of the country still is heavily laden with two lane highways, often heavily congested now, which may have been an ideal solution over 50 years ago. However, is it not a high time to have some vision for the future of United States for the sake of our children and grandchildren as opposed to just be some users of the fruits of labor of past visionaries? At least, we owe that much to our forefathers to leave their legacy behind well intact.