Our Nation's Infrastructure

America is going to need foreign dollars to fix its aging public highways, bridges and tunnels.

When the Great Depression of the 1930's crippled jobs, homes and the dreams of millions of Americans, the president of the United States launched a massive infrastructure building program that spent federal funds on everything from the Pacific Coast Highway in California to the Triborough Bridge over New York's East River. Public works, and other federal efforts, created a $22 billion federal deficit in 1933. It was a stunning amount of money for a country where electricity and paved roads were still reserved for urban areas.

While the decades to follow saw tens of billions of new dollars invested in infrastructure, we never saw that level of commitment again, and building, expanding and repairing of America's public works was left on a catch can basis. Now, with many of those bridges and roads approaching the three quarter century mark, our nation has some difficult choices to make: replacement, repair, renovation or ruin.

The price tag will be enormous and the challenge to our taxpayers will be chilling. For example, are New Yorkers prepared to approve the billions required to rebuild the Whitestone Bridge, a suspension structure built in the 1930's, and whose condition is so weary that trucks are now limited by weight and time of day?

The metropolitan region recently got a glimpse of its future when an overturned tractor-trailer shut down the neighboring Throgs Neck Bridge, the Whitestone refused the truck traffic and a conga line of heavy vehicles had to travel to the aging Triborough span to get through the region.

Our weakening economy has further hampered our ability to invest in the concrete and steel that keeps commerce in motion. At a time of residential foreclosures, confiscatory property taxes and corporate layoffs, government will be loath to float the bond issues needed for public works. Privatization is becoming the only effective alternative.

The concept is already being introduced in some parts of the country, most notably the Skyway in Chicago, where tolls create a return on investment for an overseas company that won a $1.8 billion bid for the eight-mile toll road, with a contractual pledge to restore that artery to 21st Century standards. That effort is creating a model for similar efforts to put additional private dollars to work for public transportation. Ironically, the private toll road isn't new.

The issue of public-private toll roads is not without controversy. In Texas, plans to bypass congested cities with an integrated, intermodal transportation network are generating hostility. Dependence on gasoline taxes for new roads hasn't created the revenue needed to maintain them, much less construct highways, yet local citizens see private investment as generating big bucks for big investors without doing much for the average motorists.

And our waterways will need $500 billion in work within a decade. Where will that money come from? Our nation's energy infrastructure is also woefully behind the investment curve. Powerful NIMBY forces reject upgrades to liquid natural gas terminals while the rest of the world buys up LNG futures to ensure their economies will run on the fuel. There is virtually no investment in clean coal technology and atomic energy plants are moribund. Aging electrical stations that could produce more energy, and with far les impact on the environment, beg for new investment, but few are willing to invest the time and money to go through the approval process.

Before our nation comes to a screeching halt in the dark, we need to get past our prior prejudices regarding overseas investment in America's public infrastructure. If we aren't prepared to shoulder the burden ourselves, we should be prepared to welcome carefully constructed deals that would put billions of foreign dollars to work in our urban centers. Ironically, in an era of global uncertainty, international investors still want to bet their futures on the inherent strength of the United States. We should do the same.

(The above article appeared in the April 25, 2008 edition of Long Island Business Week).

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