AnalysisThe crisis of U.S. infrastructure, III
The crisis of U.S. infrastructure is one of political will — the will, that is, to vote for money to maintain this elaborate infrastructure; the true political divide lie between Americans who are willing and able to pay up front for the nation’s needs — whether through taxes or tolls — and those who would rather skimp or burden their children
On Thursday and Monday we discussed the state of U.S. infrastructure, and agreed with the analysis by National Journal’s Burt Solomon that the situation of U.S. infrastructure is not as bad as some of the alarmists would have us believe, but that it does need regular maintenance. Trouble is, the money for such maintenance is not readily available becasue politicians would rather spend money on more glamorous projects. As a result, on matters of infrastructure, the United States is losing ground. “It would be an overstatement to say our system is in crisis,” Brookings’s Clifford Winston said. “At the same time, the annual costs of the inefficiencies [because of congestion] are large, growing, and unlikely to be addressed by the public sector.” No longer is American infrastructure on the cutting edge. “I think we are falling behind the rest of the world,” Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) told Solomon. He is pushing legislation to create a blue-ribbon commission that would frame a coherent national vision for dealing with the country’s disparately owned and operated infrastructure, variously the responsibility of federal, state, or local governments or — for a majority of dams and many recent water systems — private owners. Besides the existing bottlenecks in the movement of goods, Blumenauer foresees “real problems with the backlog of projects”—for sewers, roads, water, bridges, etc. — within five to 10 years. And deferring maintenance, he noted, increases the costs, which is one reason he thinks that the astronomical price tags “tend to be understated, not overstated.”
The GAO, among others, is more skeptical, not only of the civil engineers’ $1.6 trillion, $300-billion-plus-a-year cost projection but also of a congressionally created panel’s recommendations. The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission announced in January that the nation must spend $225 billion annually — $140 billion more than at present — on its roads, waterways, and railroads. “Most of the needs assessments,” the Urban Institute’s Penner explained, “are very much influenced by special interests,” using unrealistic assumptions and self-serving estimates. How much the nation must spend, however, is certain to rise. For fresh water and wastewater alone, by the GAO’s calculations, the infrastructure costs over the next twenty years will range between $400 billion and nearly $1.2 trillion to correct past underinvestment. The existing facilities, if not repaired or replaced, would probably take 10 to 20 years to deteriorate, an offical said, not two or three.
Solomon writes that given the
