Whose Infrastructure— Ours or Theirs?

The Trump infrastructure plan calls for spending $1 trillion– but how much on what remains to be explained. Photo: U.S. Department of Transportaion

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Listen carefully when you hear a politician or a lobbyist speak of “infrastructure.” To really mean anything, that big ugly word has got to be qualified. “Gone are the days when federal infrastructure spending was measured in highways, bridges and ports,” as Steven Mufson, a reporter for The Washington Post, rightly points out.

For that matter, gone also are the days when no one much used the word “infrastructure” at all to refer to roads and bridges (and, yes ok, ports, too).

I looked it up. A decade ago, many of us in the industry press we’re writing feverishly about what was needed to fix America’s crumbling roads and bridges. Or, because writers don’t like to repeat themselves, what was required to repair the country’s broken highways. Back then, “infrastructure” was still a decidedly wonky term, appearing mostly in think tank reports and uttered at insider conferences.

The word isn’t at issue. Its vagueness is. Roads and bridges and ports are components of transportation infrastructure. Note the qualifier: “transportation.” That modifier is crucial because “infrastructure” bandied about unadorned is a murky term that can cover everything from roads and bridges to public water supplies and high-speed data networks.

President-elect Trump made it known right after the election that he aims to spend big on infrastructure— stating he would send a $1 trillion plan up to Capitol Hill in his first 100 days. “We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” Trump said in his victory speech.

Much less clear is what that Trump infrastructure plan will spend on what. Also nebulous is how much of it will be funded by public dollars …Read the rest of this story

Source:: http://www.truckinginfo.com/blog/passing-zone/story/2016/11/whose-infrastructure-ours-or-theirs.aspx