You Know Where They're Doing an Amazing Job Tracking Infrastructure? The Yukon

Large-scale infrastructure projects create a dilemma. On one hand, we love them. Americans overwhelming support infrastructure spending. On the other hand, infrastructure proposals—monstrous highway projects in particular—are difficult for the public to digest. They tend to be expensive, often take years to complete, and are usually explained in complicated engineering jargon (if they are at all). We want better highways, railways, and ports. But how do we outline these projects to taxpayers in a comprehensible way?

The Yukon Territory, one of Canada's most desolate territories, may have the answer. The territory is aiming to renovate 25 miles of the Whitehorse Corridor-Alaska Highway. The throughway is vital to the region's mobility. It shuttles commuters to and from Whitehorse, the capital and largest city (population 28,000). And it facilitates cross-border trade between Canada and Alaska. It's a sparsely populated, largely forested region. Still, the city of Whitehorse has grown over the past decade and is projected to nearly double in size. With this in mind, the Yukon government wants to make some ambitious upgrades to its crucial highway.