Popular Mechanics on Our Ailing Infrastructure

The Stranger is boasting that Seattle's Alaskan Way viaduct made Popular Mechanic's list of most deficient infrastructure. It's number five on the list!

This top 10 list is part of a bigger feature on the US's ailing infrastructure and what we can do about it. I haven't read much of it -- there seems to be some sensationalizing and I may not agree with all of the solutions proposed in dealing with the failing infrastructure (i.e., we don't always have to repair and replace; we can remove or repurpose). I absolutely agree though that our risk of disaster is directly tied to our inability to repair and maintain our most critical infrastructure. Perhaps we should fix it first before we build something new.

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Is Safeway the Safe Way?

Rebekah and I went to the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region's Critical Infrastructure Resilience Summit today.

It was a stat-filled day about various aspects of the Pacific Northwest's critical infrastructure. I learned things like how many automobile bridges we have in Washington State (2900), the average age of our bridges, (41 years), and how many bridges are structurally deficient (82...though I was unclear if that included the Hood Canal, Evergreen Point, and Alaskan Way Viaduct bridges). I learned that 80-85% of critical infrastructure is privately owned (a US figure). I heard that it took around 8 hours for the city of Centralia to reroute wayward cars and frieght out of their downtown after I-5 was shut down by flooding....

But my favorite bunch of stats given are about Safeway and their just-in-time (JIT) inventory system. This is what I had time to jot down:

• The majority of products delivered to the stores are from outside the PNWER region
  
• Every store receives 2 deliveries a day on a 12 hour cycle
  
• 120-150 trucks make deliveries in a day
  
• Deliveries are made 6 days a week
  
• Around 1.2 to 3.2 miliion pounds of food are delivered to stores a day
  
• 90% of trucks are on the road (i.e., not at the store or distribution center) at any one time
  
• There is no communication system on board the trucks to link them to distribution centers
  
• Alaska and Hawaii get deliveries from the Auburn, WA distribution center
  
• Their most critical infrastructure (in rough order) is:
  
  1. Transportation
     
  2. Fuel links
     
  3. Electricity
     
  4. Telecommunications
     
  5. Water
  
  
• Each distribution center has no more than 3 days of fuel on site
  
• A fork lift battery will last 12 to 24 hours without needing to be recharged
  
• Water is required to operate the compressors of the refrigeration systems

At the end of the session, they had us write our questions on a card and hand it up to the moderator for asking. My question never got asked:

Assuming JIT, wasn't invented/designed to be disaster resilient, what would a distribution system look like that was?
What did the distribution system of Safeway look 50 years ago and how did it perform in past disasters?

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