John Grapper of the Financial Times points out (registration required) U.S.’s lagging infrastructure from worn out roads to spotty cell coverage and poor broadband penetration.

If anyone doubts the problems of US infrastructure, I suggest he or she take a flight to John F. Kennedy airport (braving the landing delay), ride a taxi on the pot-holed and congested Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and try to make a mobile phone call en route.

That should settle it, particularly for those who have experienced smooth flights, train rides and road travel, and speedy communications networks in, say, Beijing, Paris or Abu Dhabi recently. The gulf in public and private infrastructure is, to put it mildly, alarming for US competitiveness.

Throw this on the pile with healthcare and green technology and it’s scary to think how the richest country in the world can keep calling itself that.  Creative Class Exchange and Economist’s View echo Grapper’s concerns. Thomas Friedman wrote in The World is Flat how he traveled up and down Japan on the bullet train, easily sending emails all along the way.  I compare London’s amazing subways with a new train every 2-3 minutes to Boston’s horrendous 10-20 minute waits, even during peak hours (and don’t get me started on the $20 billion Big Dig).

This faulting infrastructure costs U.S. money and productivity.  We can’t get municipal wireless into major cities and the FCC would rather limit cable companies than let them spread broadband around the country.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Randell told Grapper his survey of U.S.’s infrastructure.  “Dams are in a horrible condition … We have no real rail transport, unlike most nations in the world … Summer delays make flying in America a disaster.”

According to Grapper, U.S. investment in infrastructure has dropped from 10 percent of non-military spending in the 50s and 60s to less than 1 percent.  China has maintained its double digit investments.  The Highway Trust Fund formed after World War II looks to run out of money next year, leaving taxpayers (and that pesky gas tax) to foot the bill.

I talked about the importance of expanding broadband, but overall the U.S. is letting Europe and especially Asia sail ahead of us competitively, developing exciting metropolitan meccas and pioneering new industries - stem cell research is stalled in the U.S. giving the economic gift to China, Singapore, and South Korea.

Yes it’s easier for smaller countries like Japan and European nations to efficiently replace infrastructure or for developing countries to skip the old for the new, hot thing, but the U.S. isn’t losing ground because it’s big - it’s losing ground due to complacency.  Congress got embarrassed for its $300 million “Bridge to Nowhere,” and has apparently decided not to build anything else.  That’ll teach those damn taxpayers.

The U.S. should, at some time this century, join this century.  Build efficient communication and transportation networks, creating not only jobs, but opportunities.  Post-war America saw this potential and it let to decades of prosperity.  Wouldn’t we like some of that again?