Infrastructure at the limit of decay

I find articles like this interesting. If an infrastructure has decayed to the point of self-collapse, then it has no margin for earthquakes. I don't think Chicago has a high seismic hazard, but New York and Boston do. So much money is generated from these cities' economies, yet they cannot tap the necessary 5% for infrastructure turnover. As mentioned in the article, these places have only coped by robbing Peter to pay Paul, and now their debt interest is so high, they have no money to clean out the rust.