Maybe Other Countries Will Help U.S. Pay for Its Transportation System, Since The GOP Won't

June 2, 2014

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, EINNews.com

Here’s a pop quiz.

What do these countries have in common?

Poland, Australia, Estonia, Switzerland, Canada, Spain, Hungary, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Japan, Portugal, Slovakia, Greece, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Austria, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia.

Answer:

Every one of these industrialized countries (Yes, even Greece!) spends more on its transportation infrastructure as a percentage of GDP than the U.S.

Poor, poor U.S. Apparently we can’t afford to adequately maintain our roads, bridges, waterways, rail and other transportation systems, let alone apply advanced technologies to build new and better ones.

And it’s about to get worse.

The White House estimates that unless Congress enacts the President’s proposed $300 billion, four-year transportation program, current transportation funding will run out later this year, endangering 112,000 highway, port and bridge projects, 5,600 transit projects and nearly 700,000 jobs.

As early as July the Highway Trust Fund will run out of money. That fund has been the reliable pump helping to fuel construction and maintenance of the Interstate Highway System and rail services since Eisenhower was President.

Poor, poor, U.S. It seems we just can’t afford a modern transportation system any more.

At least that’s the takeaway from congressional Republicans who have stonewalled the transportation program bill. They are balking at increased gasoline and diesel taxes (which haven’t been increased in decades) and the closing of some tax loopholes which the President has proposed to help cover the cost.

Even if miraculously the Republicans dropped their opposition and enacted the full $300 billion package, that would be merely a small down payment on the $3.5 trillion the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates is needed just to bring U.S. infrastructure into the 21st century.

According to the ASCE, school construction is half of what it was prior to the recession, despite increasing enrollment.

An estimated 42% of major urban highways are congested with no relief in sight.

One in three Americans lives within 3 miles of a hazardous waste site. Clean-ups have been starved for cash for years.

About 8,000 bridges are structurally deficient-—that’s more than 10 per cent of all the bridges we rely on to keep roads and rail traffic safe.

Each year U.S cities collectively experience 240,000 water main breaks from antiquated systems. Many of those systems are more than 100 years old.

And so on.

What should we call the failure to come to terms with all of this? Dereliction of duty? Criminal negligence? Or just plain incompetence or stupidity?

Meanwhile, other nations don’t seem to have problems recognizing the importance of modern and safe infrastructure in today’s connected economic world.

Travelers can ride the Chunnel between London and Paris in little more than 2 hours. Throughout Europe, from Barcelona to Brussels, Rome to Milan and elsewhere, rail moves at top speeds of 186 miles an hour. Amtrak’s Acela can barely touch 150 miles an hour on some stretches, but it averages much less because of creaky rail beds.

Japan’s bullet trains move at over 200 miles an hour. Last year Japan rolled out a magnetic levitation prototype that when deployed will cut travel time on most routes in half. China and South Korea also are building maglev systems. India is well into a $600 billion highway building program and the reconstruction of all of its rail lines.

Falling behind in road-building, rail, inland waterways, reliable bridges, water and sewer systems, schools, levees, broadband the other infrastructure of modern industrial societies is not just losing a numbers ranking game. It’s the stuff that makes countries competitive and attractive to business growth, and to entrepreneurs and families and high-skilled work forces. And we’re losing. We can’t even seem to agree to pay to keep our crumbling highway program maintained.

Here’s how bad it is.

The Japanese government has offered to lend the U.S. half the $8 billon cost of building a Maglev train that would serve the 37-mile route between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. The train would cut travel time to 15 minutes. Current conventional rail travel takes an hour. Japan and its Central Railway Co. would make this investment to showcase what they say will be the “technology of the future.”

It’s very generous of the Japanese. But it wasn’t that long ago that the U.S. was making such offers to other nations, showcasing its own advanced technologies.

Poor, poor, U.S. It’s not that we don’t have the money. In terms of economic output we are the richest nation in the world. U.S. gross domestic product is double China’s, three times greater than Japan’s, 16 times South Korea’s.

No, it’s not the resources to finance these projects that we’re short of.

We’ve just lost our political minds.

(Joe Rothstein can be contacted at joe@einnews.com)