The Brookings Institution penned an article titled “To Fix our Infrastructure, Washington Needs to Start from Scratch” – published December 2019.
In 2016, during the presidential election, it felt like Federal infrastructure reform was within our grasp. Now, months from another presidential election, the Federal Government is no closer to wholesale infrastructure reform then it was in 2016. The Brookings Institution’s article starts by asking, “so what went so wrong?” The think tank indicates that Washington could not deliver infrastructure reform because Congress and the Administration failed to commit to a process to rethink and redesign current law. At the time, key parties agreed to do something, but they never actually debated what that something should be. Today, there still is no clarity on what “reform” even means. Just like the private sector constantly needs to set and reset goals to maximize the value from existing infrastructure systems and to prioritize future improvements, the government must adopt a new set of economic, social, and environmental goals.
Infrastructure encompasses a broad range of systems and facilities designed, constructed, operated, and governed across the public and private sector.
According to the Brookings Institution, the transportation sector is the country’s top source of greenhouse gas emissions, representing 29% of the national total greenhouse gases. Existing pipes struggle to handle floods or sometimes even daily rainfall. In 2016, the top 1% of households in the United States owned 29% of household wealth. Yet the top 10% of the taxpayers pay 70% of all the income taxes and half of the taxpayers pay 97% of all the taxes.
During the past ten years, metropolitan areas with more than 1 million residents have accounted for 72% of national employment growth. As of the writing of this blog, unemployment is at a historic 3.5% nationally.
A pothole-stricken road inflicts vehicle damage on all of those who use it. As the major owners of public infrastructure—including most roads, water authorities, airports, and seaports—it is in the Federal Government’s best interest to help local governments maintain essential physical services. It is unreasonable to expect that the wealthier individuals in our country should be paying even more than what they are paying today. However, the future prosperity of the American economy depends on addressing a set of challenges – many of which were either nonexistent or unrecognized a few decades ago as detailed above. Infrastructure policies must confront these challenges head-on.
Most of the federal funding continues to prioritize highway construction. Meanwhile, there is little direct federal support to communities whose local roads are in worse shape than federally supported highways and where pedestrian and bicycle deaths are on the rise. Transit agencies face a similar limitation where federal funding can only support capital investments, such as fixed route construction and vehicle purchases with no support for more frequent bus and train service that could put essential destinations and jobs in closer proximity to workers.
One of the major challenges happens to be NIMBYs (not in my backyard) and NOPEs (nowhere on planet earth). Nimbys or Nopes continue to stop all types of transportation investments, from roads to bridges to high speed rail. Communities claim that they want to improve the transportation system if it does not impact their community or pass through their community. In Maryland, a long hard battle occurred for the first and only light rail system because communities did not want stops within or near their neighborhood. Even today, in Maryland, where there is a Maglev system being examined through the NEPA process, communities are already beginning to fight the prospect of a Maglev system for all the reasons cited in a zoning hearing at the local level.
Finally, the United States would benefit from a revised set of infrastructure policy. Federal leaders cannot accomplish this by simply updating old policy architecture, and they cannot accomplish new legislation unless they believe that new legislation for infrastructure carries a very high importance for the United States. Our country needs to modernize its infrastructure policy. Rather than following a business as usual approach, continually debating who will pay for the same programs that we have had in place for decades, federal leaders must take a step back and address the gaps in our current thinking.