A Few Simple Changes Could Make a Big Difference

The most obvious fact—certainly lost on most of the #InfrastructureWeek boosters—is that more funding alone won’t fix our problems. So what would help? Repair Priorities offers four brief solutions.

1. Guarantee measurable outcomes for taxpayers with any new funding.

Look: we simply have to stop asking taxpayers for more funding without some concrete measures to ensure new money will actually make things better. We are demolishing public trust when we promise to fix things with more money, and then fail to do so. So shut off the faucet for additional money. Congress could set concrete goals for repairing roads in poor condition, eliminating the 30,000-plus structurally deficient bridges, or drastically reducing preventable traffic fatalities in the next long-term transportation law—and then hold states accountable for meeting them. These kinds of concrete, tangible goals have been sorely missing from federal transportation policy for far too long.

We also need an inspiring, ambitious vision for the purpose of a federal transportation program in the first place, rather than just a price tag.

2. Require states to repair their existing systems before expanding.

States should be required to dedicate the automatic funding they receive by formula toward repairing and maintaining their existing road networks first. Instead, we have an insane system in which states that do the worst job with caring for their existing assets can simply request more funds to address unmet “needs,” when those “needs” could have been avoided in the first place if they had just spent their money more wisely. No more costly expansions when you’re not caring for your existing system. In my informal conversations over the years with folks not steeped in policy, they’re usually shocked to find out this isn’t a basic requirement.

3. Require agencies to demonstrate they can afford to maintain new roadway capacity projects.

With new federally funded transit projects, agencies have to prove they have sufficient funding to operate and maintain the new line or service, and can do so without shortchanging the rest of their system. We apply a laughably lower standard to the highway program. Currently, Congress is perfectly fine with states building a new road they can’t afford to preserve long-term, even as they are failing to maintain the rest of their system in a good state of repair. Who pays for that short-sightedness? We all do.

We’ve got to wring more efficiency and value out of the roads we’ve already built and require a plan for operating and maintaining anything we build. One way we could do this is with another cue from the transit program: with all highway dollars devoted to repair, Congress could create a competitive program to fund major new highway capacity expansion projects. Want to build a new highway? You’ll have to demonstrate that you can operate and maintain it over its useful life, and that it would produce substantial benefits for the cost.

4. Improve the way we track progress, and require that FHWA publish timely results.

It was pretty astonishing to learn that the most recent publicly available data on state highway capital spending is from 2014—a full five years ago. We don’t know how money was spent over the last five years but there’s an army of folks rallying to pump $2 trillion more into infrastructure. How can the public have any idea whether or not federal spending is accomplishing what was promised without better, more timely data? Any infrastructure plan or new transportation bill should establish stronger reporting requirements to ensure that our investments produce the needed results.