Word: repairer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some elected officials have concluded, however, that restoring infrastructure can be good politics. Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich persuaded voters to approve a 25% hike in their income taxes by promising that half of the money would go for capital improvements, including bridge and street repair. New York City now uses about 50% of its capital budget for rehabilitation rather than new construction, compared with just over 20% in 1970. Says Mayor Edward Koch: "Discussion at a city council meeting will not be about what building we're putting up, but whether sewer A will be finished before sewer...
...meet federal and state standards. Some of the nation's worst bridges are also heavily traveled ones. In River Rouge, Mich., the Miller Road Bridge links a huge Ford Motor factory with Interstate 94. A city engineer describes it as "utterly dangerous and in bad need of repair...
...York City is in a class by itself. Last year the metropolis had 547 water-main breaks that cost $60 million to repair. Potholes and other road defects prompted 1,941 property damage claims totaling $20.9 million. The ramshackle subway system is notoriously unreliable. Three weeks ago, a train bound for Manhattan from Queens broke down, stranding 1,500 passengers in a tunnel under the East River for more than an hour. Concerned New York businessmen are banding together to lobby for change. One group called Business for Mass Transit has taken advertisements in the New York Times to deliver...
...cost of reversing this kind of urban decay is too high for many city treasuries. Officials in New Orleans believe that it would take $200 million to repair the city's crumbling streets, but only $32 million is now available for the job. One estimate of the cost of modernizing Baltimore's sewer system comes to $1,880 for every man, woman and child in the city...
...severe strain, some cities are risking even further deterioration. Since 1973, Buffalo has reduced the number of its water-system workers by more than 40%. In the past two years, Boston has cut its mass-transit engineering and maintenance work force by 16%. Oakland, Calif., has trimmed its street-repair crew...