Someone Tell President Obama: American Bridges Aren't "Crumbling"

Townhall ^ | 02/23/2013 | Kevin Glass

[SeekAndFind]

President Obama has been on a blitz while pushing what seems to be an evergreen priority for Democrats these days: "infrastructure investment." In his State of the Union speech, President Obama spoke of Merica's "deteriorating roads and bridges" and proposed what he called a "Fix-It-First" program that would see the government hire construction workers to work on America's infrastructure.

This worry is overblown. The Reason Foundation put out a report this week that found America's infrastructure is in fine shape, though there's certainly work to be done.

All 50 states lowered their highway fatality rates from 1989 to 2008 and 40 states reduced their percentages of deficient bridges during that time. Nationwide, the number of deficient bridges in the country fell from 37.8 percent of all bridges in 1989 to 23.7 percent in 2008.

The Reason Foundation study tracks spending per mile on state-owned roads and measures road performance in seven categories: miles of urban Interstate highways in poor pavement condition, miles of rural Interstates in poor condition, congestion on urban Interstates, deficient bridges, highway fatalities, rural primary roads in poor condition and the number of rural primary roads flagged as too narrow.

Moreover, if America's infrastructure is in bad shape, it's not because of a lack of government spending. Reason Foundation found that inflation-adjusted infrastructure spending has grown by 60% in the last twenty years despite the government controlling roughly the same amount of road mileage.

It's popular to cite th World Economic Forum rankings of world infrastructure, but misleading. The U.S. was ranked 16th in infrastructure according to the WEF, behind similar countries like Canada. But the top countries in the world for infrastructure are small and dense - those of the Netherlands and Singapore, for example. Among the world's largest countries, the U.S. stands behind only Canada, and among the world's most populous countries is bested by France, Germany and Japan. U.S. infrastructure certainly comes out well compared to the rest of the European Union, as Charles Lane pointed out.

There are certainly things that the federal government can and should do in the area of infrastructure investment. Last year, Ed Glaeser laid out a positive agenda - because President Obama at the time was on a previous pro-infrastrucutre blitz - for infrastructure investment that would focus on market reforms and decentralization that would fix what needs to be fixed while staying humble in scope.

LET USERS PAY: In the early days, we paid for infrastructure, such as the Erie Canal and the Brooklyn Bridge, by charging tolls. That was easy to do, as demand for these improvements was enormous. But our fondness for big projects gradually and dangerously moved us away from this ideal. The Highway System is meant to be funded with gas taxes paid into the Highway Trust Fund, but funding formulas mean that the taxes each state pays into the fund rarely match the money received.

The stimulus delivered a dollop of highway spending provided with general tax dollars, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that the Trust Fund will be broke by 2014. Yet Congress is now promoting a vast new road spending bill. The budget the president presented yesterday supports paying for infrastructure with “current user-financed mechanisms,” but also proposes tapping “part of the savings from ending the war in Iraq and winding down operations in Afghanistan,” which just means using general tax revenue to pay for highways.

DE-FEDERALIZE TRANSPORT SPENDING: Most forms of transport infrastructure overwhelmingly serve the residents of a single state. Yet the federal government has played an outsized role in funding transportation for 50 years. Whenever the person paying isn’t the person who benefits, there will always be a push for more largesse and little check on spending efficiency. Would Detroit’s People Mover have ever been built if the people of Detroit had to pay for it? We should move toward a system in which states and localities take more responsibility for the infrastructure that serves their citizens.

INSTITUTIONALIZE MAINTENANCE FUNDING: Throughout the world, political leaders love to cut ribbons on new projects, but they hate the hard work of maintaining older infrastructure. The natural result is that bridges become unsafe and highways are riddled with potholes. As I suspect that states and localities will always do too little to invest in maintenance, this would be a good place to redirect federal spending.

Instead of funding new projects, the Highway Trust Fund could instead become solely a road and bridge maintenance fund. Obama’s 2013 budget moves in this direction by espousing a “fix-it-first policy,” but that isn’t the same as tying future tax revenue to needed maintenance.

Despite President Obama's dire warnings, American infrastructure is not "crumbling." Infrastructure investment isn't a magic wand for economic sluggishness. There are positive steps in a federal infrastructure reform agenda that can be undertaken, but President Obama's dire warnings about the decrepit state of American infrastructure aren't true and aren't helping move the conversation forward.

[cripplecreek]

As I see it there are 3 primary problems with our infrastructure funding.

1st is the fact that roadbuilding has always been a source of corruption through things like kickbacks and shoddy construction that’s deliberately overlooked.

2nd is the amount of transportation money that’s siphoned off to pay for other things. I’ve read that some 30% is skimmed off the top before we even get to the money that’s earmarked for “Alternative transportation”. Then there’s public transportation that is considered successful if taxpayers only pick up 75% of the tab. For instance, the people mover in Detroit is rider funded at a rate of 7% with the taxpayers picking up the other 93% of the tab.

And 3rd is the truly insane crap like paying for sensors in San Fransisco parking lots so people with a phone app can find empty parking spaces. I believe Seattle got some of that action too. In Ann Arbor and many other cities we pay for free charging stations that primarily cater to upper middle class people who should be buying their own electricity. 4 or 5 years back, Karl Levin was seeking some $4 million in transportation funds to save what was left of the old Tiger stadium in Detroit. His justification for using transportation funds was that a bus stop would be included.

[kearnyirish2]

I believe the logic NY used in constructing the bridge at one of the widest points of the river illustrates why they SHOULDN’T receive any federal aid; they picked a wider part of the river because they would have to share the revenue with NJ if they built it in a logical spot (like the George Washington Bridge). They wanted a “New York” bridge, they got it; I (as a NJ resident) shouldn’t get the bill. If they had built it right they could make the case for “interstate commerce”.

[kearnyirish2]

See # 22 for the Tappan Zee issue.

We were fortunate enough in NJ to have Governor Christie shut down a thrid tunnel project under the Hudson River because the need simply didn’t exist anymore. It was supposed to be a gift to labor unions, but when traffic was analyzed, and it was revealed just how many jobs the NYC metro area had lost anyway (leading to greatly-reduced traffic), the supporters were reduced to insisting the third tunnel be built because someone might want to SEE A BROADWAY SHOW. Shortly after that oral diahrrea, the project was killed.

[kearnyirish2]

“It certainly isn’t an epidemic or chicken-little proportion Obama wants to make it out to be.”

Living in the rustbelt in northern NJ, I think there is an epidemic - in the Dem strongholds (which are also the oldest urban areas). The structures were built with Dem labor, and they want to rebuild them with Dem labor, but the funds have all been chased out by Dem taxes. As with Detroit (though on a lesser scale), there is simply no reason to rebuild anything in an area where a W-2 hasn’t been issued in decades.

The Dems vision for the socialist paradise of the future is to have the hardworking taxpayers, in whatever low-tax environment they’ve fled to, foot the bill for every basic need of every Dem voter in the Red (communist) states. It is the basis for ObamaCare, Social Security, unemployment extensions, and now infrastructure repair; they need to stop the natural human instinct to flee the high taxes that Dems bring, and make it so it isn’t worthwhile to flee.

Here in NJ each adult taxpayer is expected to pay 25% of the cost for a public school teacher, an illegal alien, and a welfare brood; if the taxpayers flee they’ll find a way to give the bill to Texans, Floridians, and such.

[radioone]

This isn’t whatsoever about bridges. It’s all about federal dollars being funneled to Democrats via their big individual donors that make millions on the contracts and the Unions who skim off “dues” from their workers.

[CodeToad]

We may have less bridges crumbling than we did 20 years ago but we still have some significant bridgs crumbling. We tax payers are getting robbed and our money is not representing us. Instead, our money represents voters that don’t pay the same taxes and vote against us.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Those three reasons sound right.

And the preezy is threatening to eliminate air traffic control, because of the sequestration. I guess he wants to prove that he is the anti-Reagan.

[BfloGuy]

While I recognize that roads and bridges are important, it certainly seems that Obama does consider them to be a sort of magic wand that grows the economy.

He does and so do all the pseudo-Keynesians who dominate economics in the U.S.. They believe that economic activity -- spending -- is what's important. If we all just keep our dollars circulating to the next guy, things are as good as they can get.

The idea of wealth creation, which is what happens when a farmer turns a $300 bag of seed into a corn crop worth $10,000, is unknown to them.

[Right Wing Assault]

I believe there is a case for Federal support for strengthening this bridge since it is an important gateway to and from NJ, NY and CT.

Charge a $1.00 toll per trip and you will raise $140,000 each day and over $50,000,000 each year. That would help a bit toward the new construction. Those who don't like the toll can find another way across the Hudson.

[csmusaret]

Bridges have to be in good shape. Obama has been fixing them every year since 2008.

[kearnyirish2]

“It’s all about federal dollars being funneled to Democrats via their big individual donors that make millions on the contracts and the Unions who skim off “dues” from their workers.”

No doubt; the Kenyan Pirate makes sure to slip in references to his bosses (the teachers’ unions) any time he’s in front of a camera. There is simply no money left to funnel here in the northeast, and no reason to fix any of these things. The states are dying a slow “Detroitification”, and there’s no way to stop it. Dem spending is just accelerating it, if anything.