When the New York Review of Books Focuses on Highway Safety and Infrastructure Funding

When the New York Review of Books begins to weigh in on the infrastructure funding crisis, in an article titled A Country Breaking Down, you know the message coming from tolling and other highway advocates is finally breaking through and reaching a broad audience.

In late February, regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Drew, listed a number of must reads regarding our nation’s crumbling infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) quadrennial Report Card for America’s Infrastructure  was at the top of the list.

ASCE was in good company in Drew’s collection. The report stood alongside Jonathan Waldman’s Rust: The Longest War, Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s Move: Putting America’s Infrastructure Back on the Road, Henry Petroski’s The Road Taken, and Ted Koppel’s exposé on the country’s vulnerability to cyber-attack.

That kind of bookshelf tells you (though you already knew it) that we’ve learned all we need to know about the infrastructure crisis, and it’s time to solve it. But reaching wide, influential audiences is a constant priority for highway advocacy, including IBTTA’s Moving America Forward campaign. And when the New York Review is onboard, look no farther for evidence that we’re making solid progress.

Laying it on the Line

Drew shows her impatience with the infrastructure deficit, observing that: “The near-total failure of our political institutions to invest for the future, eschewing what doesn’t yield the quick payoff, political and physical, has left us with hopelessly clogged traffic, at risk of being on a bridge that collapses.”

She adds that “Congress’s approval last December of a five-year bill to spend $305 billion to improve the nation’s highway system occasioned much self-congratulation that the lawmakers actually got something done.” But ASCE’s research shows that “the recently enacted highway bill will make only a dent in the needed roadway construction.”

Moreover, “the congressionally approved methods of paying for the recently passed bill to spend $305 billion over five years on building and repairing roads, bridges, and mass transit systems reflect the difficulty of finding ways to pay for infrastructure projects—or what are called in Washington lingo the ‘pay-fors.’”

Getting it Done

Drew doesn’t dig into the pros and cons of specific funding methods. Apart from support for the gas tax, and her concern about “the recent rampant and mindless anti-tax fever,” she sees only “dubious and uncertain” options for paying for the infrastructure we need.

As we know, the job of educating decision-makers and opinion leaders never ends.

But the review is crystal clear about the benefits of getting infrastructure projects done. “The arguments in favor of a major American initiative for fixing and building our infrastructure are entirely convincing,” Drew writes. “This would improve the country’s physical condition and create jobs for the middle-class sector that’s been most hurt by the recession and has lost out in the widening income gap.”

Even so, she frets that things may have to get even worse before they get better. “It may require even more widespread paralyzed traffic, the collapse of numerous bridges…we may well need to incur more chaos and ruin and even deaths before we come to our senses.”

It’s hard to think of a better reason to recommit to the gains we’ve already made through the Moving America Forward Campaign, and keep up the patient, relentless advocacy and education for a wider toolbox of funding options.

Click here for the latest on IBTTA’s Moving America Forward campaign.