State highway officials still awaiting ‘meat on bones’ on alleged $1 trillion infrastructure plan

As the late, great senator Everitt Dirksen would say, “A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

So far, talk is all that’s being produced from President Donald J. Trump’s promise of a grand $1 trillion investment program for, as he put it in his recent speech before both houses of Congress, “new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways gleaming across our beautiful land.”

But in a recent gathering of top state highway officials in Washington there was considerable skepticism that Trump’s plan, like so much of his fledgling presidency, is a lot of talk and very little doing.

  “We appreciate President Trump's continued emphasis on producing an infrastructure investment package,” Bud Wright, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the group that represents state departments of transportation, told the AASHTO Journal. “Our state members hope it will generate sufficient investments to really improve mobility throughout the nation.”

But Wright cautioned that state DOTs and other transportation stakeholders “are looking for the details” of what the president will propose. “There's not a lot of meat on the bones yet,” he said.

“We spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, and we have potholes all over our highways and our roads,” Trump said recently. “I have a friend who is in the trucking business. He said, 'My trucks are destroyed going from New York to Los Angeles.' ”

Infrastructure experts in Washington are urging the Trump administration to focus on what is most sorely needed first. American Road & Transportation Builders Association CEO Pete Ruane said in a statement, “When it comes to infrastructure, strategic focus should be the key.”

Ruane added: “The biggest return on investment would be found by modernizing America's economic expressway – the Interstate System and its connections to the nation's major ports, inland waterways, rail hubs, airports and pipelines. Right now it is woefully underperforming, costing every American citizen and business time and money.”

Trump said, in a speech on Feb. 28, that his $1 trillion plan would be financed through “both public and private capital – creating millions of new jobs.” He added this “would be guided by two core principles: Buy American and hire American.”

One thing is nearly certain. “It's not going to be $1 trillion coming out of Washington, D.C.,” said Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, adding he has met with Trump at the White House twice on this issue

“There are billions and billions of dollars out there today, private sector dollars, that are going to be spent,” Shuster told AASHTO officials.

Trump does seem aware that infrastructure that so many shippers and manufacturers run their supply chains on is in sorry shape. As he put it, “We've spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas, while our infrastructure at home has so badly crumbled.”

New Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, in a speech to AASHTO officials March 1, said the nation “is at a tipping point. Business as usual is no longer an option.”

Saying “the time has come for a new program of national rebuilding,” Chao said DOT would streamline regulatory reform, revamp grant programs and invite more private investment in infrastructure.

 “I think everyone can agree that our country can no longer afford to take decades to build a new bridge, highway or airport,” Chao added.  What are the obstacles standing in the way of timelier project delivery?  Are there processes that could be streamlined?”

Chao said the administration is focusing on four initiatives:

• identifying and addressing the unnecessary bottlenecks;
• regulatory reform initiative to streamline project delivery, and reduce unnecessary administrative burdens; 
• changes in discretionary grant programs; and 
• unleash the potential for private investment in infrastructure

“There are many innovative financing tools available, such as public-private partnerships that can be more fully utilized,” Chao said. “In order to take full advantage of the estimated trillions in capital that equity firms, pension funds and endowments can invest, these partnerships must be incentivized with a bold new vision.

Shuster said Congress would take up infrastructure funding measure this year, though others say it may be kicked into next year “I’m not interested in 2018,” Shuster said at the AASTO conference.  Shuster did not offer any other timeline.

Rep. Pete DeFazio, D-Ore., said automatically raising gasoline and diesel tax based on inflation increases in construction costs would increase fuel taxes less than 2 cents a gallon. He said that hardly would be noticed by consumers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is quietly pushing a nickel-a-gallon increase, perhaps each year for five years.

But those bipartisan calls have been met by silence by the Republican-controlled Congress. Republicans have resisted raising the fuel tax, even though it hasn’t been raised since 1993. It remains 18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline, 24.4 cents on diesel.