WASHINGTON — Wild weather is taking a toll on roads, airports, railways and transit systems across the country.
That’s leaving states and cities searching for ways to brace for more catastrophes like Superstorm Sandy that are straining the nation’s transportation lifelines beyond what their builders imagined.
Despite their concerns about intense rain, historic floods and record heat waves, some transportation planners find it too politically sensitive to say aloud a source of their weather worries: climate change.
In the latest and most severe example, Sandy inflicted the worst damage to the New York subway system in its 108-year history, halted Amtrak and commuter train service to the city for days and forced cancellation of thousands of airline flights at airports in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia.