The great American transport crisis tells us something

From the Baltimore bridge collapse to chaos at Boeing, what look like discrete problems are in fact part of a wider dysfunction.

- Rana Foroohar

Transport in America is having a crisis moment. You can see it in the headlines from the debacle at Boeing, through to the collapse of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, to the fact that the US can't even build its own commercial ships any more.

Adding to this list of woes are longer-term problems like the lack of good overland train travel, poorly maintained roads and post-pandemic declines in the safety and reliability of city transit systems.

More recently, there's a sense that the electric vehicle (EV) revolution is stalling as Tesla slumps, China gains and Donald Trump threatens to pull the plug on the entire clean energy transition if he becomes president again.

These stories are often put in separate baskets. But like so many things in complex systems such as transport and logistics, they are in fact connected, often in unexpected ways.

Consider, for example, the container ship accident that resulted in the collapse of the Baltimore bridge. You could easily argue that it is part of a larger story about America's old and decaying infrastructure.

After all, this hasn't been updated in a significant way since the Eisenhower era - although the Biden administration has made a start with its fiscal stimulus programme.

The direct weekly economic impact of the Baltimore port closure is about US$1.7 billion (S$2.3 billion), and the indirect impact of supply chain shifts may be far greater.

Already, this has raised concerns about additional inflation that could stem from the disaster.