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America’s Infrastructure Needs
America’s infrastructure has shown signs of distress for years.
On August 1, 2007, the I-35W bridge collapsed over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, killing thirteen individuals and injuring hundreds more. This was the latest in a series of recent signs of distress in our nation’s infrastructure stock, following a steam pipe explosion in New York City in 2007, the levee breeches in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the failure of the power grid in the Northeast states in 2003.
Congestion on our nation’s roads and airways has also grown as our population and economy have expanded. A quarter of airline flights now arrive more than 15 minutes late. And, according to the Texas Transportation Institute, the average driver is delayed more than 50 hours annually due to traffic congestion in the nation’s 20 largest metropolitan areas, an increase of more than 35 hours since 1982.
Our nation’s infrastructure stock is poorly maintained and in dire need of upgrade.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) graded the nation’s infrastructure in 2005, providing both letter grades as well as detailed needs assessments. Overall, the ASCE gave our infrastructure system a “D” grade and estimated that the nation’s total infrastructure funding needs over a five-year period approached $1.6 trillion. This includes:
- $116 billion annually to maintain and upgrade our nation’s roads and bridges;
- $12-13 billion per year to reduce chokepoints and delays in our freight rail system, as well as increase the nation’s intercity passenger and commuter rail network;
- $10-15 billion annually to modernize the nation’s air traffic control system and maintain and upgrade airport capacity;
- $21 billion per year to maintain and expand America’s transit systems;
- $10-20 billion each year to replace aging drinking water facilities and meet new federal safe drinking water standards;
- $19.5 billion annually to replace aging wastewater systems and construct new ones; and,
- $1 billion annually to address high-hazard dam conditions throughout the country.
Current Public Spending on Infrastructure
According to the Congressional Budget Office, in inflation-adjusted dollar terms, annual public spending on infrastructure has risen steadily, from $105 billion in 1956 to just over $312 billion in 2004, an average of 2.3 percent per year. Of this total amount, the federal government spends approximately $75 billion a year on infrastructure investments.
The Federal budget does not make infrastructure investment a key priority.
Although, federal spending has averaged an annual rate of increase of 1.7 percent in dollar terms, as a share of total non-defense federal expenditures, the federal contribution has declined. Between 1956 and 1966, infrastructure spending as a share of total non-defense federal expenditures was approximately 10 percent, peaking at 11.2 percent in 1960. Since that time, this figure has steadily gone down. Over the last twenty years, federal spending on infrastructure now averages 3.5 to 4 percent of total non-defense expenditures.
As a share of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), total public spending on infrastructure spending, including federal, state, and local governments, has also remained constant, between 2.3 and 2.5 percent over the past twenty years.
State and local government are picking up more than their fair share of overall investment.
This has translated into a larger burden being shouldered by state and local governments, as the federal government’s share of total public spending has remained constant. State and local governments now account for three out of every four dollars spent by the public sector on infrastructure over the past twenty years.
Additional Resouces
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