The Infrastructure Funding Crisis is Mostly About Surface Transportation
Governments’ failure to invest in physical infrastructure will cost the average American household $3,400 per year between 2016 and 2025, and the largest share of that cost is in surface transportation.
That’s the top-line finding in the latest edition of Failure to Act, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ analysis of the cost of inadequate infrastructure. The report covers everything from airports and waterways, to water, wastewater, and electricity systems, to highways, transit, and commuter rail. But the greatest need for funds, and the greatest cost in jobs, business sales, and GDP, is on the ground.
Surface Transportation Gets Squeezed
Particularly for the decade ending in 2025, ASCE’s analysis shows surface transportation bearing the brunt of the infrastructure crisis. A $1.1-trillion funding gap across the sector will account for 76% of the missed opportunity across all infrastructure. The million jobs lost in surface transportation represent 41% of the overall total. Surface transportation will also see 31% of lost business sales and 30% of lost GDP as a result of chronic underfunding.
ASCE’s commentary paints a familiar, dire picture of the economic impact of underfunding, much of it related specifically to surface transportation. “With deteriorating infrastructure, higher business costs will be incurred in terms of charges for services and efficiency, which will lead to higher costs incurred by households for goods and services due to the rising prices passed on by businesses,” the report notes. “Travel times will lengthen with inefficient roadways and congested airports and airspace,” and “goods will be more expensive to produce and more expensive to transport to retail shelves for households or to business customers.”
“Business-related travel, as well as commuting and personal travel, will also become more expensive and less reliable,” ASCE continues. “As a consequence, U.S. businesses will be more inefficient. As costs rise, business productivity falls, causing GDP to drop, cutting employment, and ultimately reducing personal income.”
The Highways Your Highways Could Be
The ASCE analysis helps explain why more and more U.S. drivers are voting with their pocketbooks, weighing the cost of paying tolls against the value of a safer, faster, more predictable ride. IBTTA’s National Toll Facilities Usage Analysis showed that 2015 was a banner year for U.S. tolling, with 10 of the 31 agencies in the survey reporting double-digit growth in a single year.
The five billion trips on tolled facilities represented a 7% increase in volume over 2014—putting the U.S. industry on a pace to double its volume over 10 years.
The ASCE report is agnostic about the method of funding infrastructure, though it notes that 23 states stepped in between 2010 and 2016 to address the highway funding shortfall. “State action, combined with current levels of federal funding, have stabilized the downward trend in highway investment, but it remains at a level lower than required for effective functioning of the national highway system.”
To learn more about what a modern tolled facility can do with adequate funding, visit IBTTA’s website for some innovative success stories and don’t forget to register today for IBTTA’s 2016 Summit on All-Electronic Tolling, Managed Lanes, and Interoperability, July 24-26, 2016 in Boston.