I-95 Bridge Collapse

I expect a lot of people around the country are thinking that I-95 being severed for several weeks is going to be a huge catastrophe. Probably not as much as you think, because I-95 in Philadelphia is a spur from the main east coast highway. People hauling good or their asses from New York and points north to Baltimore and points south depart I-95 in Mansfield, New Jersey and continue south on the New Jersey Turnpike, then connecting with I-295 and ultimately rejoining I-95 in Delaware. So I-95 in Pennsylvania carries mostly relatively local Philadelphia area traffic. That will be a major PITA for the area, but not such a huge blow to interstate commerce  beyond the Philadelphia area. Why the architects of the highway system chose to designate the roads in that way I cannot say, but I ' m guessing that stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike was built later. Anyway, you don ' t care about that, but what you probably do care about is the extent of our dependence on highly interconnected human built infrastructure. Compound this scenario by severing I-295 in, say, Collins Park, Delaware and we ' d really be hurting. I ' m not going to spin out other scenarios, you can exercise your own imaginations. But it wouldn ' t take a foreign enemy with an air force to seriously mess us up. I ' d say we ' ve actually gotten lucky so far.
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs