Better Roads Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/85927
RoadWorks Inside the highway and bridge industries The ups/downs of an infrastructure bank vital future work and development? The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released a report looking into its possibilities. W A federal infrastructure bank could play a limited role in enhancing in- vestment in surface transportation projects, says CBO, by: • Providing new federal subsidies (in the form of loans or loan guar- antees) to a limited number of large projects and • Allowing the benefits of potential projects to be more readily compared in a competitive selection process. A potential advantage of SayWhat? "From an environmental perspective transit doesn't have much to recommend it." - National Center for Policy Analysis Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett ould an infrastrsucture bank work? Would it be a major factor in funding such a bank, according to the report, is that it could encourage sponsors of projects to charge users for the ben- efits they receive, lowering project subsidies to a small percentage of total costs. It could also overcome certain barriers to the financing of multijuris- dictional or multimodal projects. But, says CBO, a key limitation of providing funding through a federal infrastructure bank is that only some surface transportation projects would be good candidates for such funding, be- cause most projects do not involve tolls or other mechanisms to collect funds directly from project users or other beneficiaries. A second drawback is that the sup- port offered for surface transportation by most proposed infrastructure banks would not differ substantially from the loans and loan guarantees already of- fered by the Department of Transporta- tion (DOT) through its Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program. But keep this in mind: The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimates that we need another $13 billion a year spent on transpora- tion infrastructrure to keep it in its present state and $83 billion a year to do evrything we should be do- ing. Existing U.S. state infrastructure banks "generally function as inde- pendent entities," says CBO, but a federal IB would be part of the federal government. 50th and Last awaii now has a law re- quiring motorists to move over a lane, or at least slow down, when approaching stopped emergency vehicles. It was the only state not to have a "move over" bill. Reports say the death of two police officers while on traffic stops made the difference this year after attempts in the past stalled. At the same time, for the Mis- souri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), employees who spend their days on state highways, work just got a little safer. H Missouri has expanded its 2002 "Slow Down and Move Over" law that protects law enforcement and emergency response vehicles parked on the side of the road. The new law requires motorists to slow down or change lanes when approaching these vehicles, and now also includes MoDOT vehicles parked with amber and white lights flashing. by John Latta Anne Kitzman / Shutterstock.com Better Roads August 2012 5