If you were in New York City a few weeks ago, you undoubtedly either experienced the intense flooding that took over the city first hand or saw the wreckage it left behind on the news. New York is no stranger to extreme weather from arctic temperatures in the winter, the Canadian wildfire smoke that hazed the city for days this summer and the record-breaking heat seen this summer as well. New York has even had experiences with flooding in the past, but questions renewed with this last bout of extreme weather of how New York is going to adapt to these increasingly more common extreme weather events.
The recent flooding has brought up questions about how New York’s infrastructure can handle heavy rainfall in the future. When seven inches of rain fell on the city in 24 hours, the infrastructure could not keep up. Streets turned into rivers, with some water levels reaching a height to completely submerge vehicles, the subway halted many lines as water streamed into the underground throughway and water even flooded out through gaps in the walls in subway stations.
New York’s infrastructure was tested against heavy rainfall two years ago with Hurricane Ida where similar conditions were observed with flooding of the subways and busy parkways and highways. Before that, people were hopeful that the 2012 Superstorm Sandy, which also flooded city infrastructure, would be the wake up call to investing more in upgrading the crumbling systems around us.
New York needs to update their infrastructure now. Some of these systems were built a century ago and little has been spent to keep it from crumbling down around us. It is reported that the condition of Grand Central Terminal and the Park Avenue viaduct is making trips dangerous for nearly 98% of Metro North services. The Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) needs updates to their bridges, viaducts and signals. Several subway cars have reached the end of their lifespan and several more will within the next 20 years. New York transit is fundamental for residents to travel around the city so the need for repairs should be a priority.
However, this problem is not exclusive to New York City. The United States in general has not prioritized funding for infrastructure and it shows. Bridges are collapsing, dams can not hold the amount of stormwater that is coming down and water systems are continuously being contaminated. The U.S. has only been spending 1.5-2.5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) whereas the European Union spends more than half of that on their infrastructure. This lack of funding to update infrastructure that is surpassing 50 years service is very apparent, especially in the face of these extreme weather events.
Climate change has made it imperative that U.S. infrastructure be updated. These systems were not built to handle the calamity that these events bring. Looking at heavy rainfall in New York specifically, climate change is bringing warmer weather which can hold more moisture which in turn makes storms more intense. Our infrastructure was not built to withstand the wreckage that climate change can deliver to the city and this problem will only become worse in the future if left unaddressed. New York City is not built for heavy rainfall as the makeup of the urban environment is many impermeable surfaces and not enough green space to absorb this moisture. Additionally, the drainage system was not built to accommodate this level of rainfall resulting in flooding. As the effects of climate change continue to worsen, the impact on infrastructure, such as our transit and drainage systems, will only become more severe.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy cut the power for two million people, killed 43 city residents and cost $19 billion in damages. In the 11 years since then, not much progress on updating the decrepit infrastructure that allowed for those catastrophes has been made. The time is now for New York, and the U.S., to show their commitment to protecting their citizens by investing in infrastructure that is made for the world we live in today
