On a recent trip down the obstacle course known as Point and Wickenden streets, I couldn’t help but wonder why the Taveras administration has not prioritized the maintenance of the city’s roads. Without question, Providence possesses some of the worst roads that I have ever seen. Every drive is an unpredictable adventure, fraught with the danger of encountering a devastating pothole that should have been filled by the mayor’s team long ago. By neglecting to tend to these problems, the administration has allowed the city’s roads to become a serious threat to the physical safety of drivers and to the structural integrity of their cars.
While Providence may be a particularly heinous example of what happens when governments underinvest in infrastructure, it is by no means the only offender. The state of Rhode Island, too, has been putting off vital investments that could dramatically improve the quality of its infrastructure. As a result, the American Society of Civil Engineers found that 70 percent of the state’s major roads were “poor” or “mediocre” in 2013 and cost drivers $350 million annually in vehicle repair and other operating costs.
Additionally, over half of Rhode Island’s bridges were deemed “structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete,” posing a direct threat to the safety of the state’s drivers — one cannot help but worry about a local repeat of the 2007 collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis.
The ASCE did not stop there. It also awarded the United States a D+ for the quality of its national infrastructure. Thirty-two percent of roads in the world’s richest nation are in “poor” or “mediocre” condition and cost drivers $67 billion in annual operating costs. Nearly 65,000 bridges are “structurally deficient,” and approximately 20,000 of these are at risk of collapsing if only one of their parts fails. In terms of developing and maintaining world-class infrastructure, it is clear that the United States is woefully underperforming relative to its potential.
With large swaths of the nation’s decrepit infrastructure posing a direct threat to its citizens, there is a clear, compelling case to be made for boosting investment in the system. There is a strong economic case to be made, as well. A 2012 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that every dollar of infrastructure spending boosts GDP by at least $2. With economic growth of just 2.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013, higher infrastructure spending could help the United States finally achieve rapid, sustainable growth for the first time since the onset of the Great Recession.
Upgrading our infrastructure would also be a boon for business. World-class infrastructure would reduce transit times, boost transport capacity and increase efficiency, thereby boosting the long-term potential of the U.S. economy. It’s no wonder that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, by its own admission, is “(leading) the charge to improve the quality of America’s infrastructure.” To minimize the risk of investing in wasteful projects that only benefit special interests, governments could first focus on improving the quality of existing infrastructure, which — as the ASCE has pointed out — represents a clear and dire need.
Lastly, these investments would help boost employment, both directly and indirectly. Aside from creating jobs to complete shovel-ready projects, by boosting economic growth, higher infrastructure spending would act as a stimulus for the economy as a whole and generate further downstream employment. With unemployment still high at 6.7 percent and the labor participation rate near its record low, any source of brisker job growth would be welcome.
Of course, investing in infrastructure is expensive. The ASCE has estimated that the country, as a whole, will need to increase spending by an additional $1.6 trillion over projected levels by 2020 in order to raise its infrastructure grade to a B. While budgets at the federal, state and municipal levels are finally showing fewer signs of the strain caused by years of weak tax revenues, the upcoming retirement of the baby boomer generation represents an existential threat to the fiscal solvency of all levels of government. With significantly higher health care and pension costs looming, how can governments finally prioritize infrastructure spending?
There are a number of suitable options that have already been developed. Congress could finally raise the federal fuel tax, which supports road construction and mass transit, for the first time since 1993. Additionally, as President Obama has suggested numerous times, it could finally create a National Infrastructure Bank to leverage investor cash through public-private partnerships. Lastly, governments at all levels could finally stand up to established special interests, reform the very entitlement programs that threaten their solvency, and use some of the resulting savings to fund upfront infrastructure upgrades.
The next governor of Rhode Island and mayor of Providence will need to address pressing fiscal issues upon ascending to office. But with the infrastructure of the state and the city in such dire shape, and with the benefits of targeted investments so clear, it is vital that both new leaders immediately commit themselves to seriously addressing the deep gaps in the system. Allowing the status quo to prevail, while the streets remain pockmarked with potholes deep enough to get lost in, is simply unacceptable.
Kunal Sindhu MD’17 can be contacted at kunal_sindhu@brown.edu.
ADVERTISEMENT
