The Infrastructure Show - Podcasts

“Nuisance flooding” is a term for minor flooding that is not catastrophic or life-threatening, but which causes various problems for cities and towns, including overflowing storm water management systems, roads that must be closed to traffic, and

When the Federal Bureau of Reclamation finished construction of the giant Hoover Dam near Boulder City, NV in 1936, the country anticipated that this project, which had finally tamed the Colorado River, would ensure a reliable, long-term water supply

The Ohio River Bridges Project is a $2.6 billion undertaking involving the construction of two bridges in the Louisville Metropolitan Area, a metro area that includes Kentucky and Indiana, with about 1.4 million people. One of the largest

Unlike Germany, which is closing down all its nuclear facilities in response to the disaster in Fukushima, Japan, the U.S. will see completion of a new nuclear power plant in 2015 – the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar 2 nuclear plant,

The State of California has been a world leader in earthquake safety building codes, starting with the California Seismic Code, passed in 1933 after the Long Beach earthquake. In spite of code changes and advances in design standards, retrofitting

Carmel, Indiana, a city of about 83,000 people located directly to the north of Indianapolis, has become informally known as “The Roundabout Capital of the U.S.” because of its embrace of the roundabout, a traffic concept more commonly found in

On July 6, 2013, a freight train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in the downtown area of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killing at least 42 residents. Subsequently, a special emergency meeting was held in Washington, D.C. by the Federal Railroad

The U.S. General Services Administration’s Public Service Division, in its role as a landlord for the government, has in recent years been on the leading edge of green building design, new and retrofit construction, operations and maintenance.

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge consists of two separate spans, each of about 10,000 feet. The west span connects San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island in the middle of the bay, and the east span connects the island to Oakland. Daily traffic is

In Europe and other developed countries of the world, infrastructure spending generally is regarded as an investment for the common good of the citizens. In the United States, on the other hand, infrastructure spending is treated in budgeting as an

Transit service in low-density suburbs is usually provided with buses operating on local streets – rail transit on separate rights of way is too costly given modest ridership levels. But providing bus service in contemporary U.S. suburbs can be a

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the catastrophic North Sea Flood of 1953, which occurred on January 31 and Feb. 1 of that year due to a combination of very high tides and a storm with gale-force winds. The storm surge overwhelmed many of the

The 2013 Edition of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Infrastructure Report Card gave its highest grade – a B minus – to the category of solid waste management, up from a C plus in the 2009 report card. According to the

The electrical grid of the United States is an enormously impressive feat of engineering that is critical to the economic and social functioning of the nation. But the fact is, it is basically a century-old power grid, not simply inefficient but

Those who work in maintenance frequently find their departments are regarded by top management as a cost, rather than a contributor to the profitability of the enterprise. One reason is that the value of equipment and systems maintenance is hard to