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BY NICK FUDALA - CONTRIBUTING WRITER | AUGUST 19, 2014
Editorial: The Do Nothing Approach To
Transportation Investment
Why do we keep investing the minimum amount while other countries pass us by in
quality and breadth of transportation networks?
Photo from Shutterstock (http://www.Shutterstock.com)
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Our do-nothing Congress has indeed done something – that
thing they do best – by kicking the transportation funding can
down the road once more. We now have a bill that grants the
Highway Trust Fund some $11 billion over the next 10 months
(http://online.wsj.com/articles/house-forces-senates-handon-highway-funding-bill-1406833826) to help fund the
country’s roadways and mass transit projects.
The bill has gimmicks
(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/upshot/pensionsmoothing-the-gimmick-both-parties-in-congress-love.html?
_r=0) (“pension smoothing”) and critics on both sides of the
aisle (a better, alternate proposal to the one passed was a
bipartisan creation) with calls for increased taxes to fund
transportation investment even from the likes of the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce. Yet we have more of the same while
our roads and bridges erode and become ever-more congested.
Our rail and public transit systems struggle to stay afoot
despite times of record ridership. So why do we do it? Why do
we keep investing the minimum amount while other countries
pass us by in quality and breadth of transportation networks?
A curious question is why do we sit around and do nothing
where in the past we invested in great projects? Would some of
our greatest transportation projects, such as the
Transcontinental Railroad or Interstate Highway System, have
been pursued and constructed if put up for a vote today? The
effects of those projects are huge – so what would we have lost
if those before us had not had the foresight to see these things
through?
Whatever (mostly self-inflicted) crises our country faces today
are not near those that were going on when the Pacific Railroad
Acts (http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?
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flash=true&doc=32) were passed during the Civil War. In spite of the conflict the nation blew tunnels
through mountains and lay tracks in the wake to find a railroad completed and two coasts united by the end
of the 1860s.
The cost is unclear but has been estimated to have been around $100 million – an investment that,
according to American Experience’s treatment on the transcontinental railroad
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tcrr-impact/), saw $50 million
worth of freight shipped coast to coast each year within 10 years. A journey across the continent that once
took months via land route or sea had been shortened to less than a week. For better or for worse, the
American West became more open and accessible than it had ever been.
Hindsight makes the decision to push forward with the transcontinental railroad a no-brainer. As with
today, opposition to great infrastructure projects existed in the many years leading to the passage of the
Railroad Acts and completion of the line. The Southern states – the ones who would eventually secede –
long opposed the railroad as the routing would not include their land and, thus, was thought to be of no
use to them. We find such narrow-minded opposition to transportation projects still today in the face of
high-speed rail or public transportation (see the Nashville AMP (http://www.stopamp.org/)).
The transcontinental railroad laid the path for the development of the West and the connectedness of our
country. Rail would reign supreme until the automobile, and a little bus company corruption, would push
it aside after World War II. But while a cross-country rail trip took less than a week in the 1870s a similar
journey by automobile, like that taken by an army convoy including a young Dwight Eisenhower
(http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/1919_convoy.html), from Washington,
DC to San Francisco in 1919 took some 62 days. Impressed by the German Autobahn while serving as
Supreme Allied Commander in World War II and remembering his slog across the continent over 30 years
earlier, President Eisenhower supported the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956
(http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=88), thus authorizing the Interstate Highway
System.
Though over-budget by about $400 billion and completed some 25 years after schedule the investment
proved fruitful and tied the nation together more than ever. Just its impact on the economy is of note as The
Economist (http://www.economist.com/node/10697196) points out that during the first years of
construction “interstate-highway spending was responsible for 31% of the annual increase in American
productivity.”
Of course, it wasn’t all good times and happiness with the Transcontinental Railroad or Interstate Highway
System. People died during construction, many were paid meager wages, and communities divided by
unfair planning decisions. The great benefits from both investments could probably be taken down a rung
due to the sacrifices that many had to make.
But where would we be today without such creations? How different would the country be if tracks had
not been laid across the nation or if their placement delayed by unwillingness to invest? The automobile
had long since found its way into the culture of America when the first soil was turned for construction of
the Interstate system so where would we have be had it not been created to meet the demand of a growing
populace?
Today we enjoy the infrastructure given to us by those before us and, often, in much the same form as those
earlier generations saw. The American Society of Civil Engineers has given our roads a D
(http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/roads/overview), or something just above failing but still
below mediocre. They state that this costs the economy $101 billion every year while our nation’s public
transit system sets us back $90 billion (also receiving a D
(http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/transit/overview)). Airports, bridges, railroads – all
seeing record use, all receiving poor to mediocre grades, and all receiving dismal funding. How exactly do
we expect these conditions to improve with mediocre to poor to failing levels of investment?
So as we sit on our hands and wait we must try to imagine what our country will look like in the future.
Recurring congestion today will not magically improve in ten year’s time with no effort to improve.
Perpetually delayed trains (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/10/thesorry-state-of-amtraks-on-time-performance-mapped/) will not run more efficiently, nor faster
(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/07/us/delays-persist-for-us-high-speed-rail.html), without the
funds to maintain and expand upon what’s been given to us. The population continues to grow while our
infrastructure remains stagnant, becoming older and more obsolete with every passing day, and no
spineless, gimmicky funding effort is going to change that. So how can we not invest in our country – one
so often billed as the best – and instead accept mediocrity as our new standard of being?
Nick Fudala is a co-founder of ratpag.com (http://ratpag.com) and lives in Brooklyn, New York.