Infrastructure: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

infrastructure it's our roads bridges dams levees airports power grids basically anything that can be destroyed in an action movie [Applause] [Applause] we if an alien species judged humanity by our most popular movies they'd think we were furious with asphalt all the time the problem is though when our infrastructure is not being destroyed by robots and or saved by Bruce Willis we tend to find it a bit boring as you know infrastructure is not a sexy or glamorous topic as much as I'd like to think otherwise infrastructure is not sexy infrastructure is not very sexy yes infrastructure like those men we just heard from is important but not sexy although to be fair that may just be because Hollywood promotes unrealistic standards of infrastructure beauty that's not what a real Road looks like real roads had curves so most most people think infrastructure for I think it's boring but but is it because I'd argue that it's actually pretty fascinating and I know that in saying that I've basically become the rad youth counselor trying to convince you that Jesus was the Taylor Swift of his time revelations is a breakup song to the Romans guys who want another Mountain Dew catch so let's talk about infrastructure tonight and let's begin with dams because dams are amazing they're the most powerful device we have for holding back liquid aside from the idea of using a porta potti oh wait I'll just wait forever I cannot go in there America used to love dams Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State biggest concrete structure Boulder Dam stands today a modern Colossus the walls of the new dam tower into the sky like mighty modern pyramid yes and we built those dams with ingenuity and brawn and of course piles and piles of dead Irish that of course we did they're good workers and their corpses make a solid foundation material that's an architectural fact but these days America's wants great dam system is in a state of serious disrepair the average age of the country's 84,000 dams is 52 years and many of them have problems that stem from when they were first built yes much like most Botox recipients and competitive cloggers the average Dam is 52 years old and probably has something deeply broken inside of it you would think a statistic like that would terrify people into action but amazingly many states are paying virtually no attention to their dam problems in 2007 the last year for which statistics are available Texas had just seven inspectors responsible for seventy four hundred dams that's over 1,050 dams per inspector the state was only able to look at 239 dams Alabama doesn't even have an Inspection Agency to monitor its 2,000 plus dams zero inspectors that means that the state of Alabama has exactly the same number of damaged Spector's as the banned Alabama and it's not just dams we're currently doing a terrible job of maintaining all of our infrastructure the nation's infrastructure and bridges roads and pipelines is sorely in need of renovation collectively they get nothing more than a d+ a d+ think about that America got the same grade that a 10th grade teacher gives a nightmare kid so she doesn't have to deal with him for another year no no London we're not calculating the surface area of our penises just give him a d+ and say has family troubles I cannot even deal with that again and look to be fair that deep last grade came from the American Society of Civil Engineers who would clearly benefit from more infrastructure spending so it's a bit like having the state of our nation's tennis ball assessed by the American Society of golden retrievers they're dangerously underthrown this must change we've been such good dogs such good dogs but other studies have also found our infrastructure is lacking the World Economic Forum ranks America's 16th in the world and we need to be better because when infrastructure fails bad things happen like last year when a pipe burst and flooded the campus of UCLA a water main break in West Los Angeles turned the UCLA campus into a river students walked through ankle-deep water or in some cases tried to have fun with the situation I've been chilling here for 20 minutes trying to get the best view yeah I actually just came from the gym it's like I've never seen so much water except for like lakes I got [Applause] it's not just incredibly expensive it can also be lethal from the big stuff like bridge collapses and dam failures to the little stuff like potholes gone at 53 years old al Li slammed his bike into a pothole riding along Grizzly Peak Boulevard in Oakland his wife Nancy says a car then hit him head-on roads need to be paved that's why we have infrastructure that's why we pay our taxes that's horrifying but the problem is we only ever seem to talk about infrastructure when something tragic like that happens and the scale of this problem is scary as the former Secretary of Transportation points out according to the government there's 70,000 bridges that hadn't been deemed structurally deficient yeah what does that mean it means that their bridges that need to be really either replaced or repaired in a very dramatic way they're dangerous I don't want to say they're unsafe but they're dangerous hold on when we're at a point where the Secretary of Transportation is struggling to decide between using the word unsafe and the word dangerous we might have a problem worth fixing and if you want a glimpse into how close to catastrophe we occasionally are take this story from Philadelphia in 2008 two contractors from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation stopped to get a sausage sandwich and park their cars under this bridge unfortunately they wanted that sausage sandwich because they saw one of these piers with an eight-foot gash in it about five inches wide and if they had mortar the sausage sandwich there's a strong likelihood that bridge would have collapsed so there might have been a disaster if those Philly contractors hadn't wanted to stop for a sausage sandwich which means we were fine we were always going to be fine but but but the scary thing is the scary thing is what if the next crack pillow in Philadelphia is next to a vegan smoothie stand that bridge is going down and people are going to die and it's not just Philadelphia look at Pittsburgh the city of bridges and its solution to one that was dangerously deteriorating one of these arch bridges actually has a structure built under it to catch falling deck see that structure underneath it they actually built that to catch in in the falling concrete so wouldn't hurt traffic underneath it they built a bridge under the bridge that is a college sophomore approach to structural engineering where the trash was overflowing so I just started putting it in the microwave problem solved I'm a legend and there are dangerous bridges everywhere here in New York the Tappan Zee Bridge is so notoriously shaky one government official in charge of fixing it cause it's a hold your breath bridge and the only time we should ever talk about hold your breath bridges would be if for some reason beau bridges were into auto-erotic asphyxiation and you were trying to remember which one he was is either normal bridges or is he the hold your breath bridges it's important that I know this the facts about the Tappan Zee Bridge are frightening enough and yet the History Channel felt the need to produce a terrifyingly cgi filled account of the worst case scenario some of the Tappan Zee sound ations are at risk and this is what could happen if they eventually gave way okay one one that's very frightening but two why did the director assume we'd all had such a strong emotional attachment to the coffee cup King Bridge just collapsed at this point we aren't just flirting with disaster we're rounding third base and asking if disaster has any condoms and the crazy thing is ask any politician from either side and they'll tell you that infrastructure is incredibly important everyone agrees on this in fact at a recent hearing both business and labor in the form of the US Chamber of Commerce and the afl-cio turned out to support infrastructure spending and even they know how rare that is if business and labor can come before you United on this issue and we are united on this issue despite our sharp disagreements on a variety of other matters I think that should tell everybody something and tell them very loudly he's right the last time business and labor agreed on an issue it was the issue of how dead should Jimmy Hoffa be they both agreed pretty dead hey here's how obvious our need is just two days ago even a total idiot agreed we have to rebuild our infrastructure crumbling everything's crumbling and we're rebuilding China okay now what's the labor whatever the he was talking about regarding rebuilding China that upside-down piece of candy corn in a wig made of use medical gauze is right we do have to rebuild our infrastructure so with consensus like this how are things so bad well one of the problems is just fixing things is not politically appealing because when you build something new you get to do this [Applause] [Music] [Applause] there is nothing politicians like more than using oversized scissors to cut through ribbons but you don't get to cut a ribbon after routine repairs infrastructure is like Legos building is fun destroying is fun but a Lego maintenance set would be the most boring toy in the world it comes built and then you maintain it and if you do it right nothing happens and eventually you die have fun son perhaps the best symbol for our neglected infrastructure is the US Highway Trust Fund it is the single largest source of infrastructure funding in this country and guess what's about to happen to it there's a May 31st deadline this year the Highway Trust Fund goes bankrupt unless Congress acts yeah the fund is about to run out of money and unlike most broke trust fund recipients our highway system can't just get a job at its daddy's Law Firm really Declan what case are you working on and does it contain 24 Miller lights I hate you Declan the reason the fund is nearly insolvent is that it's primarily funded by the federal gas tax and there's just one hitch with that the Highway Trust Fund gets revenue from an eighteen point four cent per gallon gas tax but the tax has not increased to keep up with inflation since 1993 and the fact that it hasn't increased means that in real terms the gas tax has gone down 39% since 1993 much like Koosh ball sales or respect for Bill Cosby I'd like to think it was more than that but sadly I don't think it is actually you would think that Congress would fix this shortfall but we haven't had long-term transportation legislation for over a decade in fact since 2003 it's barely passed two partial authorizations and 23 short-term extensions one of which in July 2005 was for just two days two days that entire extension lasted half a sting orgasm that's not enough so so you might think why doesn't Washington just raise the gas tax and fund the fund well because that would be incredibly unpopular listen to what happened when c-span had a call in and asked people whether or not the gas tax should be raised I don't know that another gas tax is gonna help us out okay no they shouldn't raise the gas gauge okay the last thing we need is new taxes okay if gas prices go back up we'll be stuck with the super high prices okay what I want to say is no war on coal war on gasoline war on diesel I agree with all of the other previous callers okay okay that calling lasted for nearly an hour and they did not receive a single call in favor of the gas tax you would think they'd at least have been prank calls by Mikey in the Badger dc's number one morning zoo crew hi I just like to say we should definitely raise the gas tax you've been badgered [Applause] [Music] face in the face of that kinda overwhelming lack of public support it is hardly surprising that the White House is not too keen on it either the administration has not put forward and does not plan to put forward a proposal to increase the gas tax okay so it seems raising the gas tax is unlikely which is fine as long as you have another concrete way to raise that money so what is the White House's plan this administration has put forward an idea by essentially you know closing a loophole that allows corporations to benefit from stashing some of their profits overseas okay raise funds by closing corporate loopholes I think we all know that is guaranteed to work the only obstacle would be and I know that this is highly unlikely if there were another corporate loophole somewhere else in the tax code oh oh and there is one other obstacle when the president floated this plan by John Boehner a year ago he swatted it aside perhaps because Boehner favors his own plan which he's been talking up for the past two years I'm committed to working a defined a funding source so that we can begin to repair America's aging infrastructure The Hunt has been underway for the last year and a half to find out funding source which I could report to you we found it but we haven't we've got to find a way to deal with America's a crumbling infrastructure and we do need to do it in a long-term program that that is in fact funded two years and nothing that is but an oddly laid back way to tackle a potentially catastrophic problem because if a giant lizard we're attacking our roads and bridges you wouldn't spend two years saying yes I am committed to preventing marauding lizards destroying our city but we need to do it in a long-term program that is in fact funded I refuse to believe that after all this time Boehner does not have some sort of plan we actually emailed his office earlier this week and asked what is Speaker Boehner's proposal to raise revenue for the US Highway Trust Fund we didn't hear back so we emailed someone else in the office still nothing so we call to the office still nothing at this point we were getting desperate so we sent in this tweet asking mr. speaker how specifically will you raise revenue for the US Highway Trust Fund hashtag happy birthday Justin Bieber just to make sure that he would see it for definite still nothing then we found out that he's on vine for some reason because apparently he's 14 in 2013 so we sent him this mr. speaker how specifically would you raise revenue for the US Highway Trust Fund is that six seconds it feels like I'd be a lot longer nothing he still didn't get back to us look the lack of political urgency in tackling this problem is insane and you cannot tell me that you are not interested in this because every summer people flock to see our infrastructure threatened by terrorists or aliens but we should care just as much when it's under threats from the inevitable passage of time the problem is no one has made a blockbuster movie about the importance of routine maintenance and repair or they hadn't until now we're a few feet of concrete can mean the difference between life and death where everything you love can be taken from you in the blink of an eye a few brave souls are willing to risk everything to make nothing happen it's time for your biennial bridge inspection I've got Thursday afternoon or Friday anytime before 3:00 this summer get ready for infrastructure brace yourself for 98 heart-pounding minutes of incremental maintenance I'm not showing any cracking note the lamination dose falls on the concrete deck that you got mild corrosion on feet you're gonna have to keep an eye on that thank you sir don't get cocky the New York Times calls infrastructure necessary and something I never thought about but yeah sure Jesus Scott Bobby behind you sickness this thing is gonna blow fifteen or twenty years which is farts so important that we caught it early [Music] in this line of work one mistake could be catastrophic it's loose boss bolt is loose well then tighten it god dammit I don't know which one okay listen to me listen to me listen lefty-loosey righty-tighty [Applause] [Music] talk to me what's going on it's good [Applause] holy stone says nothing happens and that's probably for the best I came here to chew bubblegum and inspect bridges you want to see terrible puns about engineering you don't fully understand looks like somebody needs to get their ducks in a row you want to see 20 minute monologues on the structural integrity of girders I'm ordering uniaxial test to the slab transverse to the deck corrugations with additional reinforcement and tension tests of the support fastener connections between the deck and the girders routine maintenance that you can handle they use PVC piping when they should have used see PVC piping god help us you want to see infrastructure featuring an all-star cast plus two-time Academy Award nominee Edward Norton sorry three-time Academy Award nominee Edward Norton and introducing as the chief steve buscemi I'm the best damn inspector in the business and I'm here to inspect us dam infrastructure if anything exciting happens we've done it wrong sausage sandwich of course you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 13,805,794

Rating: 4.9053054 out of 5

Keywords: hbo, infrastructure, john boehner, edward norton, steve buscemi, Josh Lucas, Hope Davis, Campbell Scott, Dan Hedaya, Michael Gaston, Vince D’Onofrio

Id: Wpzvaqypav8

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 02 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/PhinsPhan89]

Here's the 60 Minutes report they cut to a few times during the segment, in case anyone is interested:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/falling-apart-america-neglected-infrastructure/

[u/JohnSpartans]

As a Pittsburgher, that bridge he mentions is being demolished this Xmas and will be replaced by 2017. It is a very well traveled bridge, and the highway underneath it will need to be re-routed for a few days after to clear all the debris once they take it down.

Should make holiday traveling that much more fun.

And as you would expect, there are tons of people saying it shouldn't be taken down, since it will cause too much traffic. You can't win with infrastructure arguments. You just can't.

[u/KaptainKoala]

Structural Engineer here. . . . please give us more work

[u/confluencer]

John Oliver's aside hypothetical tangents make this show.

[u/zombiejh]

John Oliver is amazing. I'm not even american. I don't give a shit about american infrastructure but the videos are just too good not to watch.

[u/[deleted]]

I love when the start of my week is with Last Week tonight.

[u/Suitable_Penguin]

Great as usual. I really appreciated his points on how inadequate the gas taxes are and how bad the problem is getting.

I remember when Minnesota got a rude wakeup call on this issue when the massive I-35W bridge collapsed, killing 13 and injuring 145 others and we began to pay more attention to the issue. It felt like the focus then was still on roads and bridges, hopefully our over capacity railroad system and pipelines were addressed too..

[u/FinallyGivenIn]

Were the engineering terms used correctly? Or just a random mishmash of words strung together?

[u/Madmanquail]

☒ Video Length: 21:14
☒ Subject of video: "Infrastructure"
☑ "Something something John Oliver"

Conclusion: Watch the entire video