Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/426956
December 2014 | EquipmentWorld.com 74 final word | by Kirk Landers H ow will the new U.S. Congress deal with the nation's highway and bridge funding crisis? No matter who controls the House and Senate, we can expect another two-year chorus of can't, won't, shouldn't when the subject of roads comes up. These are the contractions of gridlock and they are the safe political ground in a nation where ill-informed pols communicate with ill-informed constituents via slogans and sound bites. Can't, won't, shouldn't have been the celebrated verbs of the fearful since irrev- erent thinkers postulated that the earth is round and could be circumnavigated by ships. They echoed through civilizations again when engineers conceived of canals as transportation solutions, and again when railroads were constructed to link the shores and cities of entire continents. And we heard those words again in the U.S. Congress when President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed the Interstate High- way System. If you read accounts of the Congressional debate over the Interstates, the objections to the system were eerily similar to the objections today's pols raise to saving the Highway Trust Fund by raising the fuel tax. We can't do that because it's fiscally irre- sponsible! I won't support it because it's too wasteful! We shouldn't do that because it's another intrusion of the federal government on state's rights! The politicians of the '50s might be ex- cused for resisting the Interstate initiative since almost no one could foresee the im- pact it would have on the economic growth of the country. The program ultimately passed because some accepted Ike's ratio- nale that it was a national defense initiative, and because many saw it as a jobs program that would be good for their constituents. What's frustrating today is that the value of America's highway system has long been established, but citizens and elected officials alike tend to take for granted the hundreds of thousands of lane miles of roads and the thousands of bridges that link our cities and states and homes and farms to one another. Because they are there, because they are working, because their slide into disrepair occurs at a glacial pace and is largely invisible until it is mon- umentally expensive to remedy, investment in roads and bridges is hard to sell. Fiscal conservatives object to taxes, environmen- talists fear an expansion of highways, and others are just tired of the noise. We need to start a new dialogue with Congress and with our fellow citizens. Re- turning the Highway Trust Fund to solvency would not fund further expansion of the system; it would barely fund the mainte- nance and repair of the system we have, and that only if we continue to innovate methods and materials. More to the point, by failing to maintain and repair our roads and bridges in a time- ly manner, the value of our infrastructure declines and the cost of repair escalates – often exponentially. We need to make sure the members of the new Congress, the media and our fellow citizens compre- hend this fact: Healthy infrastructure is a valuable asset, decaying infrastructure is a terrible liability. Can't, won't, shouldn't