To Maintain Current Highway Conditions, AASHTO Says $120 Billion Is Needed Annually
Local, state and federal governments need to spend a combined $120 billion annually for the next six years just to bring highways and bridges to a condition that meets today’s traffic demands, said a new report from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
Current spending totals only about $83 billion a year on the nation’s road system, AASHTO said in its “2015 Bottom Line Report” released Dec. 9.
In all, to meet current demand, AASHTO said over the coming six years $392 billion should go to highway system rehabilitation; $237 billion to highway expansion and $112 billion to upgrade bridges.
The recession and the long economic recovery offered the country an opportunity to capitalize on lower construction costs to upgrade road and public transit systems but, unfortunately, states didn’t have the resources to do that, the report said.
“As a result the backlog of national investment needs for both rehabilitation and other condition improvements and response to historical capacity deficits remain substantial,” AASHTO said.
If projected growth in commuter, transit and freight traffic is realized in the coming years, the nation’s transportation investment needs will be even higher — maybe as much as $156.5 billion annually for highways and bridges alone, AASHTO said.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, there will be “a 47% increase in tons in the 25 years from 2015 to 2040; ton-miles are expected to increase by 72%; and value by over 90%,” the AASHTO report said.
The report also cited studies by the American Transportation Research Institute that said congestion costs trucking $9.2 billion a year in increased operational costs due to 141 million hours of lost productivity in the nation’s fleet.
In the report, released jointly along with the American Public Transportation Association, AASHTO also cited several groups that have assessed the condition of and the investment in infrastructure by the United States and found both wanting.
The World Economic Forum, for instance, puts the United States at 19th in terms of quality of overall infrastructure — behind such countries as France Germany, Japan and Taiwan, the AASHTO report said.
And a 2013 study by the McKinsey Global Institute cited in the AASHTO report showed the U.S. invests in infrastructure at a rate of 2.6% of GDP, when based on McKinsey’s “estimate of needs for all infrastructure investment derived from international norms and expected national economic growth rates, the U.S. ought to be investing at a level of 3.6% of GDP.”
