Too Big to Fall: America's Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward

6. The Way Forward

6 The Way Forward A country that does not have a public planning system simply turns that function over to a network of private enterprise—domestic or foreign—which then becomes the true seat of economic power. . . . If the future is to be provided for, you must have a community of planners and some way must be found to support them, to permit them to develop their plans and resolve their differences, and to give them access to the levers of public power. To walk away from this problem with a shrug about “markets” is to disenfranchise the future. . . . In New Orleans . . . the price of failing to plan properly was, in the first place, unnecessary death, and in the second, a vast and costly improvisation after the fact. And as with the levees, the main issue was not a failure to think: it was the absence of public authority, will, and money to run thought into execution. —James K. Galbraith, The Predator State Implicit in any understanding of the problems our nation faces with its ailing infrastructure is that we must make significant changes in how we fund, build, and manage these critical assets. It would be inconceivable for the nation to allocate the massive amounts of money needed to bring our roads, bridges, airports, power grid, and levees up to acceptable standards, only to have those assets begin a downward slide toward a new deterioration for future generations to correct. To address current needs and make the required structural changes in our system, we need to educate our politicians and our citizens about the critical state of our nation’s infrastructure and infect them with a renewed sense of urgency about acting before it is too late. We need to apply the latest available technology to ensure that how we design, construct, and maintain our nation’s transportation infrastructure will produce enough cost efficiencies to offset the staggering costs of the past few decades’ deferred maintenance. And we 158 Too Big to Fall need to use creative management in overseeing the trillions of dollars of assets in our nation’s transportation inventory. To do all this will require a renewed commitment to restoring our infrastructure’s lost prominence. In short, we need across-­ the-­ board revisions of the approaches that have led us to this crossroad in the history of our transportation system. Set out below is a series of recommendations to address the current problems, along with new ideas for our nation to consider, discuss, and debate. Finding New Financial Resources and Doing Better with Them The amount of money needed to fix and sustain our nation’s infrastructure exceeds $2 trillion, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (asce).1 It is a daunting amount, which cannot be collected for use to fix these problems on a piecemeal basis. Finding the money will require the federal government to play an active role. It will entail the development of new, creative relationships between the public and private sectors. It will require a renewed sense of urgency on the part of politicians. And it will involve an extensive reeducation of our leaders and the public on what will be needed for the future. The annual level of federal highway and transportation spending required to meet the “need to maintain” level under the base-­ case scenario of the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission (nstifc) is $59 billion, while another $19 billion is needed if we are to bring infrastructure uptodesignstandards,oratotalof$78billion.Estimated average annual revenues available under current law generate approximately $32 billion,resultinginanannualrevenuegapof$46billion(in 2008 dollars). The annual level of federal highway and transit spending required to meet the “need to improve” level climbs to $74 billion and $22 billion, respectively, for a total of $96 billion. This translates into an annual revenue gap of $64 billion (in 2008 dollars).2 Despite recent pronouncements by the u.s. Department of Trans- The Way Forward 159 portation (dot) that have urged the expansion of investment from the private sector, most experts believe that this approach does not represent a “free lunch” alternative. In fact, according to the excellent study prepared by the nstifc, when it comes to our nation’s ability to pay for our infrastructure’s various new and remediation needs, there is no “silver bullet.”3 But whatever solutions are developed will need to address the following imperatives: (1) the establishment of...