Crumbling America: The Infrastructure Crossroads

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Infrastructure can be such a vast, massive topic that it’s hard to fully wrap your mind around, but it is essential to our everyday lives. When infrastructure works, it often goes unnoticed or is taken for granted. When it fails, all hell can break loose.

Presently, America’s infrastructure is crumbling. Our roads, bridges and airports are in desperate need of repair.

Three years ago, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was signed into law. It was hailed as a once-in-a-generation investment. But has the bipartisan law delivered on this promise? What has it done for you? And how much further do we need to go?

In this special program, titled “Crumbling America: The Infrastructure Crossroads,” presented by KYW Newsradio, an Audacy station, experts explore the challenges facing our infrastructure and share potential solutions.

The hourlong program, which you can hear on Thursday, Oct. 24 at 7 p.m. on KYW Newsradio , breaks down the state of infrastructure into five segments:

🏗️ One-on-one with Buttigieg
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg discusses the impact of the bipartisan infrastructure law: “The backlog of improvements is finally getting smaller rather than larger, and the condition of our infrastructure is finally getting better rather than worse,” he says.

🚧 America’s infrastructure report card
In the most recent infrastructure report card issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the United States barely got a passing grade. Two ASCE members who worked on the report card explain the grading system, and how the country can better its marks for the 2025 report.

🔌 The power grid
The demand for electricity in the United States and around the world has never been higher. A high-ranking executive for one of the country’s regional transmission organizations explains how grids work, where they’re feeling pressure, and what solutions are being discussed to make sure the nation stays powered.

🔐 Digital infrastructure and cybersecurity
As this summer’s CrowdStrike outage demonstrated, our digital infrastructure is vulnerable, and chaos ensues when systems fail. From human error to bad actors, a cybersecurity expert weighs in on the threats we face online.

🚰 Water infrastructure
Aging pipes, unreliable delivery mechanisms — there are plenty of areas where America’s water infrastructure needs to be shored up and what improvements can be made.