California Dreaming: Challenges in Infrastructure and development

While the focus of this blog is primarily b2b marketing and more specifically how it relates to industrial machinery marketing, I would like to digress a little in this post as I am presently in California meeting with our sales team and touring the surrounding industrial areas of Fresno, San Diego and Riverside on a photo shoot focused on our excellent construction products.  Having not been to California from sometime several impressions are what I would like to highlight.  Namely, the heightend erosion and decay of the great highways and byways that seem to be busting at the seams with traffic (read users) in strark contrast to the limited trucking and industrial activity usually seen in past visits.
It appears the need for construction equipment should be at an all time high and that an infrastructural boom would be in the offing due the real and present issues with traffic, but this of course is not the case.  In fact sales to contractors, and construction companies are at near unseen low, right across many competitor brands and suppliers who in past years lead their perspective markets.  Many have speculated as to the root causes from the Democratic debt loads to the mismanagement of key State funds earmarked for roads and infrastructural development over a decade or so in California.  From my limited outsider perspective, there needs to be a chicken before the egg approach to revitalization of public roads and bridges.  Namely, communities need to remember how their roads came into being in the first place.  Development and social pressure for services were driven by core business needs.  Put another way the exact opposite of  'build it and they will come'. Rather they are here and we need to build it approach.  This fact saddly is lost on many municipalities that like households need to decide if shiny Xmas lights and fancy trimming will take priority over more mundane but fundamental needs such as rent/mortages and utility bills.  No one or government can spend their way out of debt but at some point the reality that key assets such as roads and bridges are necessary and ignoring their repair and upgrade will only end badly.