John Hennessy III,
P.E.
MANHATTAN INSTITUTE Introduction American infrastructure is in dire need of repair and replacement. Yet decades of experience have shown us that simply showering federal money on infrastructure is not the right solution. Indeed, this approach has been shown to encourage wasteful spending on projects that are politically expedient but economically dubious. Large injections of federal […]
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Will 2016 Election Promises for Significant Infrastructure Investment Be Kept? Today’s political environment can be summed up in two, frustrating words: partisan gridlock. Aside from the year-end sprint to pass tax reform, it has become next-to-impossible to enact major legislation in several areas, including transportation, water infrastructure and energy. Expectations for 2018 nonetheless, remain high.
View this complete post...The expanded use and funding for Private Activity Bonds (PABs) has again taken over the spotlight in infrastructure debate in America. A six-page document claimed to be the draft outline for President Trump’s long-awaited national infrastructure plan was leaked this week and PABs are among the major infrastructure funding principles addressed.
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PROBLEM SOLVERS CAUCUS (PSC) INFRASTRUCTURE WORKING GROUP Executive Summary America’s infrastructure supports the world’s largest economy across a network of nearly 9 million miles of roadway, 160,000 public water systems, 5.5 million miles of local electrical distribution lines, and nearly 90 million fixed broadband subscribers. Unfortunately, due to years of underinvestment and deferred maintenance, America […]
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This report looks at the current state of the plug-in vehicle charging landscape within the context of the broader transition from internal combustion vehicles to plug-in vehicles. EVSE deployments and sales largely track with the sales of plug-in vehicles, so we will briefly touch on the broader transition to plug-in battery electric vehicles and how the transition is progressing around the world to set the stage for the EVSE discussion.
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Complete Streets is a fundamentally different approach to transportation planning, design, and engineering than the status quo of the last half century. It requires that all aspects of decision-making and implementation consider the needs of all people who use a road, regardless of age, ability, or mode of transportation. Streets are viewed as more than ways to move as many vehicles as possible. They are public spaces that connect and contribute to everything that surrounds them.
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Subway reliability is way down, and the bus system is shedding riders at an alarming rate. And because transit is so unreliable, today New York is accommodating growth in cars, in the form of the tens of thousands of Uber and Lyft vehicles we now find on our streets each day.
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We looked at 100 cities on a global basis and not one US city made it into the top 20. The highest ranking city was New York City, and they came in at number 23. Probably the biggest challenge that all of the US cities face is the continued dependency on passenger-car travel. We don’t have nearly as well developed metro systems or transit systems for sharing or using alternative means–whether it’s walking or bicycles or other methods of getting around. That’s the big challenge for the US cities, is to look at how they go about diversifying their transportation options.
View this complete post...The House bill eliminates Private Activity Bonds (PABs) and Low-income Tax Credits, which are critical to the construction of housing developments. Both bills call for eliminating advanced refinancing bonds. These tax-exempt bonds allow cities to refinance debt. Without advance refinancing bonds, many large projects at the state and local levels of government will be immediately jeopardized. Additionally, the tax reform bill, unless changed, increases the federal deficit and that will trigger $150 billion in automatic cuts to vital transportation and infrastructure investments.
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While many cities feel the immediate positive outcomes from wealth flooding into metropolitan regions, they also feel the negative impact on community members of varying income levels – particularly, those at the bottom that face increased housing prices, greater need for social services and growing concern for community safety. The income inequality and wealth gaps are at outsized levels, with the richest 0.1 percent holding the same amount of wealth as the bottom 90 percent. And when examined through a racial equity lens, the disparities become even starker; on average, white families have six times the wealth of African American and Hispanic families. This is where we are now. Unfortunately, the current policy environment at the national level isn’t focused on alleviating these inequities—cities are.
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