Editorâs letter Thereâs a specific feeling I get whenever I fly into New Yorkâs JFK airport and start to make the drive home. It feels exactly like turbulence. The roads around the nationâs busiest international air hub are littered with moon craterâsize potholes, which make for a juddering and profanity-filled (âOh, my poor bleeping suspensionâ) experience. This isnât a uniquely New York problem: According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 43 percent of roads across the U.S. are in poor or mediocre condition. And the decay goes beyond holes in the blacktop. More than 40 percent of the countryâs bridges are at least 50 years old, and about 46,150 have been given the worrying designation âstructurally deficient.â Some 178 million trips are made across these decrepit bridges every day. At the current rate of investment, it will take until 2071 to make all the repairs currently needed to those spansâbut by then, of course, many other bridges will have fallen into a dangerous state of disrepair.