James Surowiecki writes: \u00a0From the crumbling bridges of California to the overflowing sewage drains of Houston and the rusting railroad tracks in the Northeast Corridor, decaying infrastructure is all around us, and the consequences are so familiar that we barely notice them\u2014like urban traffic congestion, slow-moving trains, and flights that are often disrupted, thanks to an outdated air-traffic-control system. The costs are significant, once you reckon wasted time, lost productivity, poor public-health outcomes, and increased carbon emissions.<\/p>\n
Infrastructure was once at the heart of American public policy. Today, we spend significantly less, as a share of G.D.P., on infrastructure than we did fifty years ago\u2014less, even, than fifteen years ago. The U.S. makes no net investment in public infrastructure. Yet polls show that infrastructure spending is popular with a majority of voters across the income spectrum. Historically, it enjoyed bipartisan support from politicians, too. If it\u2019s so popular, why doesn\u2019t it happen?<\/p>\n
One clear reason is politics. While both parties remain rhetorically committed to infrastructure spending, in practice Republicans have been less willing to support it, especially when it goes toward things like public transit. This is partly because of the nature of the Republican base: public transit is hardly a priority for suburban and rural voters in the South and in much of the West. But ideology has played a key role as well.<\/p>\n
Over the years, the process of getting infrastructure projects approved has become riddled with what political scientists call \u201cveto points.\u201d There are more environmental regulations and more requirements for community input. There are often multiple governing bodies for new projects, each of which has to give its approval. Many of these veto points were put in place for good reason. But they make it harder to undertake big projects. In 2010, Chris Christie was able to cancel a new tunnel under the Hudson River more or less single-handed, even though more than a billion dollars had already been spent on it.<\/p>\n
Even more egregious than the lack of new investment is our failure to maintain existing infrastructure. You have to spend more on maintenance as infrastructure ages, but we\u2019ve been spending slightly less than we once did. The results are easy to see. In 2013, the Federal Transit Administration estimated that there\u2019s an eighty-six-billion-dollar backlog in deferred maintenance on the nation\u2019s rail and bus lines. The American Society of Civil Engineers, which gives America\u2019s over-all infrastructure a grade of D-plus, has said that we would need to spend $3.6 trillion by 2020 to bring it up to snuff.<\/p>\n
Again, there are political reasons that maintenance gets scanted. It\u2019s handled mainly by state and local communities, which, because many of them can\u2019t run fiscal deficits, operate under budgetary pressures. Term limits mean that a politician who cuts maintenance spending may not be around when things go wrong. There\u2019s also what Erie calls the \u201cedifice complex\u201d: what politician doesn\u2019t like opening something new and having a nice press op at the ribbon-cutting? But no one ever writes articles saying, \u201cRegion\u2019s highways are still about as good as they were last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only when things get really bad willt infrastructure issues get public attention. This is the heart of our problem: infrastructure policy has become a matter of lurching from crisis to crisis, solving problems after the fact rather than preventing them from happening.<\/p>\n
Congress tapped the Central Bank for monies this year, but that deal was a one off. \u00a0Infrastructure is usually financed by loans in the form of government bonds which are repaid by tolls, and other measures. \u00a0Jobs are created. \u00a0Structures made whole again. \u00a0Obama had a chance to do this in 2008 and did not. \u00a0Hard to know whether the next President will take up the important task.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
James Surowiecki writes: \u00a0From the crumbling bridges of California to the overflowing sewage drains of Houston and the rusting railroad tracks in the Northeast Corridor, decaying infrastructure is all around us, and the consequences are so familiar that we barely … Continue reading