Hundreds of thousands of jobs. Trillions of dollars. That's what it will cost the U.S. economy over the next 30 years if current trends continue in letting our surface transportation infrastructure crumble. That's according to the latest report by the American Society of Civil Engineers—
Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Surface Transportation Infrastructure.
The report concludes that for 2010 alone estimated deficiencies in surface transportation systems cost households and businesses nearly $130 billion. About $97 billion of that was in vehicle operating costs, $32 billion in travel-time delays, $1.2 billion in safety costs and $590 million in environmental costs. By 2020, the accumulated losses to personal income and gross domestic product are projected to be $930 billion and $3.1 trillion, respectively.
Along with 400,000 lost jobs.
If surface transportation were kept up to snuff, there would be 1.3 million additional jobs in "knowledge-based and technology-related economic sectors." But those losses would be balanced, if you can call it that, by the 900,000 jobs needed in "traditionally lower-paying service sectors of the economy that would benefit by deficient transportation (such as auto repair services) or by declining productivity in domestic service related sectors (such as truck driving and retail trade)."
Leave the potholes and it's a win for the auto-repair business. Nice.
The costs of these deficiencies are spread across pavement and bridge conditions, highway congestion, rail and bus and trolley transit conditions. Just to keep "minimum tolerated conditions," the report states, would require spending $196 billion annually on roads and bridges plus $25 billion in rail and bus transit infrastructure (including rolling stock).
Unless the trends are reversed, the ASCE states, households will not only see a median of nearly $7000 in reduced income in 2040, they will also spend $54 billion more on transportation costs because of infrastructure deficiencies. In addition to these losses, the U.S. will export $28 billion less in goods in 2020 and $72 billion less in 2040 than if the transportation infrastructure were more sufficient.
While it's essential that we deal with "deferred maintenance," as the wonks like to call it, there's far more that needs attention regarding U.S. transportation. As I wrote in June:
[O]ur transportation infrastructure is not merely plagued with antique equipment and battered pavement. Shaky old ideas predominate as well. In spite of the obvious purpose of transportation—connecting human beings, goods and services—we have allowed inefficiency, gridlock, lethal pollution and fiscal insustainability to rule the day. […]
[O]ur major modes of transportation poison us, burn two-thirds of the oil we drill at home and import from abroad, make us less secure because of the geopolitics involved in maintaining access to much of that oil, gobble up a scarce resource essential for making other products, extract large hunks of household income and contribute a third of the CO2 we’re loading into the atmosphere.
Rethinking transportation means rethinking zoning and other aspects of how we build our cities and develop the land in between. It demands a hard look at subsidies that promote particular modes of transportation to the exclusion of others and broadening the definition of what a subsidy is. Rethinking transportation requires rethinking the currently inadequate public revenue streams that pay for most of its infrastructure. And, obviously, it means extricating ourselves from dependence on fossil fuel, not just the imported stuff but what we take out of the ground within our own borders and from beneath the continental shelves.
The good news is that rethinking and subsequently enacting policies for remaking our transportation system can spur us to build more bike- and pedestrian-friendly cities, make our vehicles efficient, cut pollution, lower CO2 emissions, reduce the size of our military budget, boost the use of alternative fuels (including renewably generated electricity), decrease congestion and help restore America’s manufacturing base, which, in turn, will supply millions of badly needed, high-quality jobs. The bad news is that there is stubborn opposition, local and national, to all of this.
That new thinking will require trillions over several decades to implement. But those dollars should be viewed as a wise investment, not unaffordable spending. The money invested upfront would be big, but then so would the payoff. As long as the myopic crew in control of the pursestrings in Washington right now have their way, however, that investment obviously isn't going to happen. One more reason to boot them.