A couple of weeks ago, the American Society for Civil Engineers released its 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.  The Report Card, which is updated every four years, grades the nation’s infrastructure in 16 categories, including roads, transit, solid waste, bridges, drinking water, energy, parks, and schools.  This year’s report card awarded the United States’ infrastructure an overall grade of a “D+” and estimated that $3.6 trillion needed to be invested by 2020. 

This reminded me that In 2011, the Culver CIty Public Works Department released its own Infrastructure Report Card, which rated Culver City’s 3,700 street lights, 100 traffic signals, 120 centerline miles of roadways, 86 miles of sewer mains, 7 sewer pump stations, and more than 970,000 square feet of other facilities (including City Hall, Fire Stations, Police Station, Veterans Memorial Building, and parking garages).

Overall, the department awarded the following grades: 

Street Lights: C-

Traffic Signals: B

Streets: C

Sidewalks: C

Sewers: B

Facilities: C-

The whole report can be read HERE, but as an example, here are some of the things the report has to say about the city's street lights.

Many of the City-owned street lights are old and outdated. Specifically, approximately 1,500 of the street
lights are on high voltage series circuits, which are prone to failure compared to those on low voltage parallel circuits....The City’s street light system is also consumptive of electricity. The City’s lights are primarily metal halide and high pressure sodium technologies rather than more energy efficient LED or induction technology. Currently, the City spends approximately $450,000 per year on electricity for street lights, roughly 30 percent of its total electricity costs. Converting to more efficient technology could reduce the electricity costs of the converted lights by roughly half.

Of course, I like the city's old-timey lights, so maybe I'm part of the problem.