This Editorial appears in the Oct. 10 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today. When the leadership of the nation’s trucking industry gathers in Grapevine, Texas, later this month for American Trucking Associations’ annual Management Conference & Exhibition, the country’s infrastructure will be the top item on what is sure to be a busy agenda.
Unfortunately, infrastructure — both the creation of new facilities and the repair of existing ones — is not the No. 1 priority because it’s a new issue. Rather, it remains on top of trucking’s most-wanted list because of the failure of Congress and the White House to address the issue.
Now, if we can only get the nation’s political leadership focused on the dire straits of our roads and bridges, perhaps we can finally make some progress toward addressing the problem.
As ATA President Bill Graves put it recently while discussing the upcoming MCE with one of our reporters, “A lot of our members, at the end of the day, view the investment in infrastructure — and our associations’ role in shaping a positive outcome on roads and bridges — as our No. 1 priority. We keep getting ‘incompletes’ on our scorecard as a result of Congress’ political inability to get their arms around it.”
Coincidentally, this editorial is being written during a construction industry trade show in Louisville, Ky., where infrastructure is clearly a front-burner issue these days, owing to a crumbling interstate highway bridge that has been closed for emergency repairs and has traffic gridlocked in “River City” for hours every day.
We can be sure that there will be many more cities with snarled traffic if Congress doesn’t figure out a way to agree on an adequate plan to address the country’s growing infrastructure needs.
Congress has been unable even to pass a transportation spending bill since the previous one expired in 2009, instead limping along by approving seven temporary extensions of the old bill; the latest will expire on March 31.
We were pleased to read Rep. John Mica’s recent statement that the GOP leadership has given him permission to craft a funding bill that at least retains current funding levels. Up to now, he had warned of a 30% cut in highway spending, in order to match lower revenue levels coming into the federal Highway Trust Fund.
What the country needs now is strong political leadership to craft a real transport spending bill that at least comes close to meeting the level of infrastructure investment necessary to allow this nation to remain a world economic powerhouse.
