As a result of the ongoing negligence, every family in Canada loses an estimated $3,400 a year due to the nation’s poor transportation infrastructure. On top of it, an average family in Canada loses more money because of corrosion (nearly $5,000), the primary driving force of the deterioration of physical infrastructure and assets, than spends on gasoline ($2,200) and property tax (e.g., $2,300 like in Ontario) combined. At the same time, the country’s infrastructure quality could be tremendously improved without much effort and expense; up to one-third of the $8,400 per family could be easily saved only if the government showed interest and decided to do so.

It's evident that the current practice of renewing and repairing the infrastructure by patching potholes and cracks, repainting collapsing bridges, hiding broken structures behind bushes, premature and unreasonable replacing of slightly deteriorated infrastructure that could be easily repaired, etc., needs to be fundamentally changed.

The outdated and ancient technologies still employed by most, if not all, municipalities cannot work now when the problem called “infrastructure deterioration” and the number of serious accidents, including when people are hurt because of a bridge collapse or the environment is contaminated after an oil pipeline rupture, is snowballing into a crisis very rapidly. In other words, the municipalities have to stop doing the wrong things for the right reasons and start listening to knowledgeable and highly qualified experts.

Without science-based efforts and implementation of the novel and most advanced structural materials and technologies, some of which are unavailable and need to be designed and developed, the infrastructure’s deterioration will not stop; this infrastructure, which crumbles much quicker than fixed, will create only more danger to the public year after year after year. Infrastructure deterioration will not stop even if the government decides to properly—what will never happen—spend tens of billions of dollars, which it promises to invest (traditionally without proper planning and knowing what should be done) in infrastructure rehabilitation. As Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them;” our governments are changed every few years but keep thinking and acting like in the previous century.

One day, the government and the City of Toronto, like other municipalities, will have to call for qualified experts, including (highly paid) world-renowned scientists and world-class experts, who know and can determine what and how should be done first, second, and so on. Only after that the various “responsible engineers” and “other professional engineers”—who are trained, for example, on how to patch a hole in a broken water main but do not know how to prevent the following tens of thousands of water main breaks, occurring across the country every single year—could be called in to do the routine technical but truly needed work recommended based on solid science and engineering.

Neither severely rusted engineering structures (including railway and highway bridges), potholes on roads, nor water main breaks should exist at such scales in the 21st century. Today’s science and technology, including fundamental achievements in studying and preventing materials degradation and corrosion, allows controlling and keeping much of the infrastructure in good shape and, more importantly, safe.