The hard work begins

I may an idiot for attempting this but I figured I might learn something if I try it.

My real life situation is a continuation of the problem I discussed last week. Our national infrastructure is in horrendous shape. The government, who we have put in charge of fixing it, is not doing its job. As I attempt to actually draw the Causal Loop Diagram for this issue I realize it is an extremely complicated system.

The typical mental model is Something Fails - Allocate Funds - Fix it - Repeat

Unfortunately, the real model must be expanded a great deal to even begin to address the issue.

I list three Exogenous variables: The age of the infrastructure, population growth, and the amount of funds available to the government.

The real model must include some measurement of how fast the state of the system is degrading. I chose the survey conducted by the American Society of Civil Engineers. This survey assigns grades to individual pieces, such as bridges and tunnels. The model must also include the politics involved which  I am tracking as 'Public Demand for Improved Systems' as well a way to track the multiplicative effect of aging, poor repairs and materials, and increase use.

One problem I encountered is the fact that I have feedback loops with multiple paths. Is this the correct way to model this problem? Do I need to rethink my variables to eliminate this problem? If anyone has any thoughts, I would appreciate hearing them.

After actually beginning this diagram, I realized that this is an issue that even though it is bad already, it will continue to worsen because all of the feedback except the original mental model, is reinforcing.

Comments anyone? 

Infrastructure Repairs