Some living outside the US may have regarded the term ‘America’s crumbling infrastructure’ as a gross exaggeration, nothing but an oft-repeated cliché with little basis in fact. But recent high-profile infrastructure failures highlighted by US and international media – such as bridges and condominiums that collapse suddenly – may probably have made them think otherwise about the extent to which US infrastructure is underperforming. Yet having visited the US many times, this author believes its condition may be poor, but crumbling it certainly is not.
However, even infrastructure that is in a poor state can have a detrimental effect on an economy, particularly in terms of the huge ongoing maintenance costs that are generated. So, it must have come as a relief to many when, on his first day in office, President Biden signed a whole raft of executive orders reversing many years of stalled initiatives on infrastructure. The new president put forward an ambitious plan to overhaul America’s infrastructure to the tune of US$1.2tr to be injected into a host of sectors that include water, transportation (rail and transit), bridges, sewerage and broadband connectivity, as well as tending to the more urgent problem of taming the coronavirus pandemic.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that the country’s water conveyance systems (drinking, wastewater and irrigation systems) will need funding to the tune of US$632m. But the largest chunk of the proposed funding will go to transportation. The focus is likely to be on freight rather than passenger services given that the private freight industry moves around 40% of the nation’s goods.
ROCK BOTTOM
Local and federal funding of US infrastructure maintenance, rehabilitation and renewal is at historically low levels yet must still be able to uphold the country’s standard of living. So, Americans should be concerned about the state of their country’s infrastructure, not merely the growing list of projects that need urgent funding just to be brought back up to scratch but also the recent ASCE infrastructure report cards which over several years have given cause for concern. Indeed, the latest (2021) gave a rating of C-minus, signifying ‘mediocre condition and in need of attention’.
Experts have issued repeated warnings that US infrastructure is critically overstretched, underfunded and in some cases failing, and they say the rate of renewal is insufficient. US infrastructure building lags behind its international competitors, especially China.
Take high-speed rail. A 2018 report from the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) disclosed that the US had only 34 miles of high-speed rail in operation; the corresponding figure for China is around 16,793 miles, 2,000 for France, 1,937 for Spain, 1,900 for Japan, and 1,898 for Germany.
Lok Home, President of TBM-manufacturer Robbins, discusses the speed of infrastructure creation. He tells TTNA: “There are rail tunnels around the country that should have been built years ago. On another front, the EPA requires tunnels to clean up the Great Lakes, but that too has taken a long, long time.”
However, Gregg W Davidson, Chief Operating Officer and Principal Engineer at McMillen Jacobs argues that the situation is not as bad as it is made out to be. “It could be better, absolutely”, he says, “but given the urban density and geographical vastness of this country, there has been a lot of positive progress made.”
Dean Brox, Canada-based international tunnel consultant said: “Some of the tunnels in the USA are well-aged – certainly some of the major rail tunnels – and in need of upgrades that are ongoing but happening slowly; there are only a limited number of traffic/road tunnels that are bored tunnels or urban cut-and-cover structures (Cumberland Gap, Eisenhower, Caldecott, etc). More important are the drinking water tunnels, like those for New York City: once discovered, it took 40 years to fix the leak under the Hudson on the Rondout project.”
HOW HAS IT GOT TO THIS?
So what is causing such a disjointed system of maintenance, rehabilitation and renewal in US infrastructure? Is the interminable wrangling between Democrats and Republicans the underlying cause of why some projects suffer unnecessary delays, assuming they even come to fruition?
Davidson believes there is way too much bi-partisan wrangling by the politicians, but finds it encouraging to see a significant infrastructure bill at last move forward. Home agrees there are problems with politics at the core, but not necessarily of a bi-partisan nature. He tells TTNA: “Getting infrastructure built in the US is a highly political process. The question often asked is ‘will it get done?’ There are frequent false starts involving significant input of engineering knowledge so it can all amount to a lot of wasted effort and money.”
Bi-partisanship in the Senate and the House has largely declined since the 1990s, says Victor Romero, President – Underground Division of McMillen Jacobs Associates. He tells TTNA that the fundamental problem lies with local governments and agencies which increasingly have been forced to fund a much larger share of their infrastructure work through local taxes, rates and/or borrowing.
Romero adds: “Where these local entities cannot or are unwilling to raise the funding, they defer the infrastructure work, which just gets more and more overdue. Perhaps we will finally see some federal infrastructure spending as part of Covid relief, but it is still probably more than a year before this money hits the market and it remains to be seen what hard infrastructure projects will get a boost.”
So, politics and frequent false starts seem to be contributory factors to infrastructure bottlenecks. But so are high costs, says Giuseppe Gaspari, Associate Vice President, Tunnel Practice Lead at AECOM (Canada). He also cites other aggravating factors affecting the US, such as the disproportionate focus on insurance and legal matters; the slowness to innovate; the limited competition, and the barriers to international bidders; and sometimes, even political short-termism.
Brox tells TTNA that part of the problem is linked to US local government levels, where the greater opportunities granted for public input/feedback on proposed projects (e.g. metro alignments) can sometimes extend over years, which contributes to dragging out the total timeline.
Lobbying is certainly a contributory factor, but for Home, it is less the lobbying power of other sectors, and more the tunnel industry’s lack of effective lobbying power which puts it at a disadvantage. Also, tunneling costs are unnecessarily high, he says, especially in areas such as New York City. And then there is the aspect that is critical for any industry: innovation. Home explains: “The tunneling sector has innovated, but it tends to be cautious in implementing those innovations. Nevertheless, we are still in a great position, able to tunnel through most geologies which we could not do 15 years ago.”
FUNDING
For some time now, investment in US infrastructure has been sluggish. The American funding model must take its fair share of the blame for this as well as for the delays in getting to market. While most industrialised countries fund their infrastructure mostly at the national level, the US funding model is based on local and state spending, with only around 25% occurring at the federal level. Contrast this with countries such as the UK, France, Germany and Australia, to name a few; they have well-established, centralised infrastructure planning frameworks that tend to work more effectively than those that are decentralised because they allow central government to plan and direct major projects more efficiently.
But Davidson argues that the existing infrastructure funding model works reasonably well. “Look at the voter-approved initiatives in Seattle and LA. I’m not sure that there is a better approach.”
Romero sees the US system as contrasting starkly with those in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, where his company also operates. “We are seeing strong infrastructure spending in those countries. However, local and nationwide governments in those countries are not any less decentralized than the US. The difference is that those political systems are much less divisive than the ones that have developed recently in the US. Whether that’s the difference between parliamentary governments and a presidential republic, or a difference in culture, e.g. group fairness versus individuality, is a matter of perspective. I think it’s a bit of both.”
Canada is an interesting example, where the federal government only ever contributes a portion of the funds, with the expectation that both provinces and local cities also give significant contributions. Vancouver’s Canada and Evergreen lines, for example, were delayed a few years until the locals had adequate funds to contribute.
Some maintain that America’s infrastructure problems can be largely sorted by the private sector which is perceived as more efficient and cost effective than state or federal agencies. They argue that measures such as the creation of a federal infrastructure bank, increased federal spending and more PPP partnerships can fix what is widely seen as a broken system.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE
It is generally agreed that US infrastructure has room for improvement, to say the least. But where does one start the improvement process and in which sector?
Biden’s infrastructure bill may turn out to be effective in the long run, but some believe it does not go far enough. US Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) thinks the bill gives insufficient consideration to high-speed rail and city transit systems which, he says, have a US$108bn backlog just to be updated. That is even before new transit options are considered. Clearly this is a critical area given that over 80% of the US population resides in urban areas.
“All major US cities need an effective transportation system, and given the congestion above ground, other options need to be looked at, namely the use of underground space,” explains Davidson. “That is happening in many cities – Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle, NYC and others. But the US tunneling industry needs to look internally at how we can sell the industry as a viable option – currently it is thought of as too expensive, contractually challenging (combative) and slow to adapt to new things. If we can improve on some of these, then we could see tunneling becoming more of a method of choice for the needed infrastructure.”
Home states: “Our transport infrastructure certainly requires more and better connectivity. We must address urgently how to elevate awareness of tunnels to that of other infrastructure. Tunnels are buried assets; they don’t degrade as much as other exposed infrastructure such as bridges and highways. The US needs to build high-speed transport not only at suburban levels but also to connect the East Coast cities. But metros are also needed in small cities, as is typically the case in Europe, many of which are below sea level.”
For Gaspari, the first major missing piece in the infrastructure jigsaw is the proper connection of intercity public transit – from mega-urban levels to the suburbs and satellite cities, as well as those links to downtowns; and at a regional level to connect the major urban conurbations. “But here you are up against powerful lobbies, which have often the interest of maintaining the status quo.”
Taking a leaf out of the Elon Musk book of tunneling – where small diameter, short tunnels are concerned – could work, given the degree of success he has had so far in getting first, Las Vegas, and now, most likely, Fort Lauderdale authorities to sign-up to his way of building tunnels. The one in Las Vegas is around one kilometre long and, as TTNA goes to press, his Boring Company is on the brink of being awarded a contract by Fort Lauderdale for 4km-long twin tunnels connecting the downtown area to the beach. Can Musk’s formula be leveraged across other sections of the tunnel industry?
It could be, says Home. “The Boring Company model works because it is appropriate. The city gives you all the approvals you need and it’s up to you to take care of it.”
Whichever solutions are adopted and how implemented, the world will be keenly watching how America tackles its ongoing infrastructure issues, how it innovates and how it funds these often critical but hugely expensive assets. For this is not just an American problem but one that will be encountered by countries where the established infrastructure is either nearing, or has passed its sell-by date.
