An Urban's Rural View

Every four years the American Society of Civil Engineers issues an "infrastructure report card," grading America's roads, bridges, dams and such on an A to F scale. ASCE's 2013 report card (http://tiny.cc/…) gave the nation's overall infrastructure a D+.

That was up slightly from the previous card's D, thanks to "incremental improvements" in solid waste, drinking water, wastewater, roads, and bridges, plus a leap to C+ from C- for rail.

But most categories were D+ or below, continuing a 15-year trend of failing grades in the ASCE's reports. A year later, the nation continues to put off essential infrastructure maintenance and to underinvest.

"While the modest progress is encouraging," ASCE said, "it is clear that we have a significant backlog of overdue maintenance across our infrastructure systems, a pressing need for modernization, and an immense opportunity to create reliable, long-term funding sources to avoid wiping out our recent gains."

There is, to be sure, an element of self-interest in the society's reports. Civil engineers make their living designing, building, operating and maintaining infrastructure. A civil engineering group calling for increased infrastructure spending is like a labor union asking for higher wages. It's what you'd expect.

That doesn't mean ASCE lacks credibility, though. It helps that it sticks to the facts and avoids exaggeration and overheated language. It also helps that its observations are, in broad outline if not in every detail, in line with other experts' views and Americans' everyday observations.

They're certainly consistent with what farmers and agribusinesses see. ASCE gave both levees and inland waterways D- grades. Not all the grades were bad news for agriculture: Ports were given a C. But roads got a D. So did dams.

In total, ASCE estimated the investment needed to "maintain a state of good repair" at $454 billion a year through 2020. Unfortunately, the estimated funding is only $253 billion a year, leaving an annual $201 billion funding gap.

Some will say we can't afford to plug that gap when the federal government is running a $514 billion deficit and the federal debt has reached $16.7 trillion. But necessary maintenance is going to get done at some point, and as I've argued before (http://tiny.cc/…), putting it off burdens future generations as much as running up debt.

More, in fact. Borrowing to do it now makes economic sense because interest rates are low and unemployment in the construction industry in double digits. In the future, interest rates will be higher and the labor market tighter. Future generations will pay more, maybe a lot more, for the same work

And it doesn't all have to be federal funding. As investment banker Felix Rohatyn and former transportation secretary Rodney Slater point out in The Wall Street Journal (http://tiny.cc/…), public-private partnerships are possible.

All it takes, they contend, is the same kind of bipartisan cooperation that Congress showed in recent months on the budget, spending and the debt limit. Rohatyn and Slater describe a number of proposals in Congress that would encourage private investors to help fund infrastructure projects, including bills to create a national infrastructure bank and to enable state infrastructure banks to sell bonds providing buyers with a federal tax credit in lieu of interest.

"In its latest report on global competitiveness, the World Economic Forum ranked America's infrastructure 25th among nations," Rohatyn and Slater write. "The country needs to do much better."

Amen.

Urban Lehner

urbanity@hotmail.com

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