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US Infrastructure Is Deplored
Engineers' appraisal fuels Senate hunt for more funding
The nation has gone backward in the last four years from an already sorry performance in maintaining vital infrastructure, a national engineers group reported yesterday.
(http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/) "America's infrastructure rates a cumulative grade of D," the American Society of Civil Engineers said, citing delayed maintenance and chronic underfunding of roads, bridges, transit, dams, aviation and other infrastructure.
The organization issued its comprehensive 2009 Report Card for America's Infrastructure yesterday as a U.S. Senate committee wrestled with ways to come up with more funding, including Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell's proposal for a federal capital budget funded by borrowing.
The organization said surface transportation and aviation systems have declined since its last report card in 2005, with aviation and public transit falling from D+ to D and roads from D to D-.
"Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic at a cost to the economy of $78.2 billion, or $710 per motorist," the report said. "Poor conditions cost motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and operating costs."
The group estimated that $2.2 trillion must be spent in the next five years to restore the nation's infrastructure to good condition. "Current spending amounts to only about half of the needed investment," it said.
The organization's president, D. Wayne Klotz, said spending more money on infrastructure "is important, but the solution will involve more than just money. It will take sound technology, wise community planning and involved citizens willing to partner with the government and private sector to make real change."
The report was cited frequently at a hearing yesterday in Washington, D.C., of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee attended by Mr. Rendell and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. While the parties generally agreed on the need for increased infrastructure spending, they disagreed on how to raise the money.
Mr. Rendell said current federal funding levels won't allow states to tackle big new transportation projects. "It's impossible to do anything but fixing, repairing, maintaining," he said.
He said the federal governments should, like state and local governments, adopt a capital budget with borrowing that spreads the cost of projects over 20 or 30 years "instead of all up front."
He called for creation of a national infrastructure bank that could leverage private investment and would choose projects for funding based on merit, rather than the politics-driven earmarking process now in place.
"I think the American people will support common-sense infrastructure investment," Mr. Rendell said.
He said he supports an increase in the federal gasoline tax, which hasn't been raised since 1993, but said that was only part of the solution.
The committee chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said she was "averse" to raising the gasoline tax and cool to the idea of abandoning a pay-as-you-go system of funding transportation improvements.
With Congress set this year to fashion a new multiyear transportation funding bill, Mr. LaHood said "there's a very strong commitment from President [Barack] Obama to put everything on the table, see what ideas stick, what makes sense."
But on a federal gas tax increase, he said: "That's off the table right now" because of "hard economic times."
Ms. Boxer noted that the federal stimulus legislation provided $48 billion for transportation improvements, including $27.5 billion for highways, that she said would improve infrastructure and create jobs.
The bill "was a good start, but it is not enough. We must have continued investment to maintain these jobs, and to make additional, needed improvements to our transportation infrastructure," she said.
"It is important to note that the $27.5 billion for highways in [the] stimulus is in no way a substitute for the hundreds of billions needed to address our nation's infrastructure crisis," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.
"Transportation and infrastructure are not all that complicated," said Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont, an independent.
"The bottom line is ... if you allow your infrastructure to deteriorate year after year after year, you don't put funding into it, you know what? It's going to get worse. And that is precisely what we have done as a nation.
"The irony is it costs more to rebuild crumbling infrastructure than to simply maintain it. We have been really dumb and we have wasted enormous sums of money.
"We are going to have a great debate on how we raise the money, but we must raise that money."
21 Comments so far
Show AllCrumbling Empire. Storm trooper boots are in good condition though.
Sure shows the world what 30 yrs, of conservative fiscal and social policies can do to a country. While our infrastructure crumbles the military is building and playing with killer robot. Those are some real interesting priorities!
This is a Duh ! There is no money because we have pissed it all away! 700+ Military Bases to maintain American Empire. Two Wars. Need I say more? We are broke - plain and simple. Do I see more Bailouts on the horizon?? Hahahahahahahahah. Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.
Well, shoot... this ain't nothing but liberal bias.
Why don't you show the grades that count: weapons design, weapons production, weapons deployment, marksmanship...heck, we got a straight A record on that stuff.
That's what's important 'cause there's a boogeyman out there somewhere. (But he's hard to see 'cause he's sneaky, just like Rumsfeld said.)
This is the result of choosing guns over butter. If this continues, Americans will experience the "joys" of having to cope with Third World type infrastructure. It would be amusing in a dark humor sort of way.
$2.2 trillion...? That's all it will take to modernize our infrastructure?
That's all it would take to give jobs to every unemployed American who wants one?
That's all we would need to do to fix the economy...?
Sorry, we already gave it to the banksters... You know, the same ones who stole your pension and 401k...
But don't worry, more bail outs are on The way...
This the beginning of the campaign to convince the sheeple that we need to spend hundreds of billions on wider freeways, not just fixing what is already there; wider bridges, not the just fixing the one that are already there; bigger airports, not fixing what is already there; and bigger and better off-ramps for the paving industry. I like to call them the paving mafia.
It is also about propping up the failing big trucking industry and the Wallmarts of the US.
They are not talking about creating a whole new transportation system like efficient high speed rail ways.
They may throw a few hundred million or billion or two on a few token projects here or there.
California seems to be the only state in the Union really putting their taxpayer money (by vote) where their rhetoric is by deciding to issue bonds in the amount of $10 billion for a new high speed passenger rail from San Diego to Sacramento. Imagine one state will soon have a rail system like Japan, France, Germany, or South Korea has had for years or decades.
If you want to involve yourself in getting new rail and not multi billion dollar boondoggle freeway widening projects here is a something to read and use as a template opinion editorial. Please feel free to use where ever.
Our future is with rail, not wider freeways
(template)
It appears that in the name of creating jobs, Congress and the U.S. Senate in 2009 will attempt to waste hundred of billions of dollars by expanding the obsolete petroleum based and failing freeway systems throughout the nation. Congressman (insert your congress person), Senator (insert your Senator) and Senator (insert your other Senator) should scrap these same obsolete freeway expansion plans. Our future as a civilization is now dependent on creating a new transportation system to survive the end of cheap petroleum and climate change. More and wider freeways and highways will only hasten economic and climatic chaos and disruption.
The only way to make this transition to a 21st century transportation system is through major expansion of passenger rail as well as extensive upgrading of existing rail infrastructure as a viable alternative to the crumbing freeway systems.
The planned expansion “NAFTA freeways,” which includes the expansion of Interstate (insert freeway in your area), being promoted throughout the country by governors, Congress and the paving industry to accommodate millions of bigger and heavier trucks from Mexico and Canada must be stopped and scrapped.
Surely we must repair and upgrade some of the most vital bridges around the country, but we must simultaneously create a rail-based public transportation system. At some point in the near future the trucking and airline transportation systems are likely to fail, and if we do not prepare for that inevitability there will be chaos and major economic disruption because of our dangerous dependence on these two petroleum-based systems for our essential needs.
While worldwide demand for oil is temporarily diminishing we should take advantage of this lull in demand and massively expand rail infrastructure throughout the nation. We can wean ourselves off of our over-dependence on petroleum with bold leadership from Congressman (insert your Congressperson), Senator (your Senator) and Senator (insert your other Senator) as well as the Obama Administration.
Light rail and heavy rail is the safest and most sustainable transportation on the planet. In the case of passenger transport, hybrid and other hyper-mileage cars can compete with light rail only when used as carpool vehicles. Passenger rail achieves between 50 to 80 passenger miles per gallon, and about 70 to 100 grams of carbon per passenger per mile. A 40-mpg auto can achieve between 40 or 80 (with 2 occupants) passenger miles per gallon. The death rate for all rail is 0.7 deaths per billion miles traveled, while the death rate for motor vehicle use is more than 10 deaths per billion miles traveled.
Fifty years of building highways and freeways for autos and trucking without any regard to urban planning, the impact on our climate, the effects on our health as well as the impact to our psychological well being as a society has led us to this over dependence on a failed system.
Many major urban areas in the country are turning towards high-speed light rail. Why is the (insert or region, southeast or your state) not forging ahead with a new high-speed passenger rail system from (insert your metro area)?
In November of 2008 the people of California voted to fund a 10 billion dollar state bond that will be matched by 20 billion dollars of federal transportation dollars to build a high-speed passenger rail system from Sacramento to Los Angeles. This action by California voters is awe inspiring!
The new Amtrak rail from New York to Washington, D.C.,, the same train Vice President elect Joe Biden rides to work every day, has seen an increase in rider-ship of 20 percent from 2006-07, for a total of 3.1 million passenger trips. An upgraded Amtrak route from San Jose to Sacramento is up 15 percent from 2006-07 for a total of 1.4 million passenger trips.
As constituents we must convince Congressman (insert) — (chairman …. )— Senator (insert) and Senator (insert) as well as other (insert your state) lawmakers that we must have a high-speed light rail system in the (insert your region or state) as well as major upgrades and expansion of rail infrastructure throughout the nation. These new rail systems will not only provide thousands of new jobs for decades but will keep the (insert your region or state) and the country economically competitive with other economic superpowers in Asia and Europe.
We must demand rail infrastructure now. We either transition off of our complete dependence to petroleum by going to rail now or surrender to a complete collapse of our whole economic system and way of life.
End.
I think you are reading things into this report that aren't there. Highways are just one item on the report card.
I am an ASCE member myself and I can assure you that every month the organization's magazine's feature stories are all on public transit, water and energy efficient building pojects. I havent seen any story on a highway project in a while.
---USAn---
"Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic at a cost to the economy of $78.2 billion, or $710 per motorist" - and throughout my whole life, no one seems to ever question such an idiotic situation!
The US is NOT a country - it is an amalgamation of losers who fled their own society rather than stay and do the hard work of fixing it. Maybe that's why nothing ever gets built right here in the first place, let alone properly fixed.
Tinkering on the margins isn't going to do it - it's time for a pardigm shift.
Interesting perspective, for sure.
Nice work there clearcut but you might want to reconsider the statement: "Passenger rail achieves between 50 to 80 passenger miles per gallon"
Because according to a cnet article: "With a consumption of only 0.33 liters per seat for every 100 kilometers traveled (712 mpg), the Velaro is the most environmentally friendly high-speed train on the market, Siemens claims."
We have to be careful or we'll be stuck with a chimpwagon on rail, getting 30 mpg, consuming twenty times the energy as the seimens train, and at a cost of five to ten times the seimens train. We know unless we keep the chimps' noses to the grindstone we're going to get a lemon, right? We know they want to sell us a gallon of fossil fuel every 30 miles, not every 700 miles.
At least the grades aren't in red ink, so we can feel better about it!
"He called for creation of a national infrastructure bank that could leverage private investment and would choose projects for funding based on merit, rather than the politics-driven earmarking process now in place."
This is doable as an initiative under Amendment X, ratifiable both by state initiatives and by public referendum.
Sooner or later, WE have to figure out that Amendment X lets US take initiative and author a more substantive role in the nation's governance, as opposed to merely relying upon Washington to do it all.
Obviously, even for Mr Obama banks are more important than we the people.
700 bases and two wars in countries where we are definitely not wanted, are more important than health care for all -- not health insurance, that is a whole other thing.
For the republicans it is more important that Mr Obama fails than getting our country back on a more reasonable path.
Just read that there is now a Jihad to fight the Jihad -- but "the" Jihad as explained as extremists.
Aren't we extremists? Spending half our national budget on wars that cannot be won and inventing more and more lethal weapons?
Aren't we extremists when we think we can impose "democracy" by force? (And our democracy is not very democratic any more, is it?)
Our civilization is not very civil any more either.
It's nice to have a man with an interesting background as president, but if he turns out to play the games Washington invented, "nice" is not enough.
It's nice to want to work with the opposition, but if the opposition not only does not want to play, but every word that comes out of their mouths is same old same old stupidity, "nice" is counter productive.
And all against a background of global warming, climate change.-- for that "nice" is not just not enough, it is extremely short-sighted, could well be fatal.
Our highest grade is in solid waste. I guess we do shit pretty well.
How are the Pentagons little robots going to get around the United States of America without a good highway system?
That's a good one :-)
We've got to create on the same scale as we can destroy, and that won't be possible without universal access to the meta-infrastructure known as the Internet. That it isn't even mentioned in this "comprehensive" report is truly depressing. The engineers may be civil but it appears they aren't very civic. They should give themselves an F for their breathtaking obliviousness to the most vital infrastructure of all.
"The US is NOT a country - it is an amalgamation of losers who fled their own society rather than stay and do the hard work of fixing it."
How Limbaugh of you. Working people and poor people are "losers."
"Hard work." Hah.
I live in Pittsburgh. Our street was just tore up to fix gas lines. All they did was fill in the holes with gravel. We have huge cracks in the sidewalk now. It looks like The Hulk came stomping around.
I go through the city and see run down home after run down home, vacant buildings, potholes. At work, the water's brown half the time.
Oh well, the elites will have smooth roads, little traffic, and clean water.
For every piece of the infrastructure which receives a D, there's a second story. No inventor has looked at that part of the infrastructure to make it perform better, safer, and cheaper too. That's because inventors have been locked out. Infrastructure is not some cheap consumer product where marketplace competition is at least possible. Infrastructure is a thoroughly corrupt oligopoly.
Occasionally a Ralph Nader comes along and takes a poke at auto safety with "Unsafe at Any Speed". More typically a product keeps lumbering along out of control for decades like the tobacco industry, ever trying to come up with a more addictive cigarette.
Aviation: massively subsidized airports support smelly global warming devices. Do you think you've scratched the surface here?
Bridges: of course they're all falling down.
Dams: better than in China, which is several disasters waiting to happen, but we've got a few of our own ready to let go. No innovation to save lives.
Drinking water: gag!
Energy: hoopla, no real research money at the garage level. They need to cut the methane already.
Hazardous Waste: what do you think you're dying from?
Inland waterways: I know little about them. Only corporations benefit. Expensive.
Levees: ridiculously planned, there's no room on either side because of too many levees so the water keeps rising until one side of the river fails. Duh.
Just to finish the list;
Public parks: the best of this bunch! Lots of public input.
Rail: massive corporate corruption. Almost nothing new invented in generations.
Roads: Vastly (unnecessarily) expensive in my opinion. But you're rich, you can take it. Some safety improvements, still a lot of car carnage. Yes it's falling apart.
Schools: The problem here is not so much physical infrastructure (in many districts) as it is craziness of purpose. A real school system would educate people to be citizens. A real school system would not be a recruitment center for drug gangs. The teachers would not slam the students' heads against the lockers to cause hard-to-prove concussions, much less allow the (student) class bully to do the same. Kids who didn't plan on becoming academic researchers in Mathematics would not have to take Geometry. Students wouldn't be doped up on caffeine, sugar and food coloring allergens from the school soda machine, nor would the cafeteria serve allergens and sugar diabetes. Teaching to the test, giving kids the test answers to win teacher bonuses, and not promoting the kids who would never pass the 10th grade test anyways, should be abhorrent ideas.
Solid waste: this is not so much an immediate problem as it is a grandchildren problem. What's in your groundwater?
Transit: again, no one invents anything. As a result transit is ten times as expensive as it should be, it doesn't do what you really want, and occasionally people get injured.
Wastewater: The Mississippi is still where all the birth control pills go after women excrete them, and they're drinking the same stuff right downstream. This is innovative?