The State of US Infrastructure
Contributed by Claire Kelly
Today, we are pleased to release our most recent research on the subject of US infrastructure. As is often the case, immersion in the facts of the issue has the potential to change one’s point of view. Potholes, rusting bridges, and late trains are annoyances of daily life in America, but these failures in infrastructure are the least of what should concern us. Here is a brief highlight of what we have found.
According to the US government, “the quality of a nation’s infrastructure is a critical index of its economic vitality. Reliable transportation, clean water, and safe disposal of wastes are basic elements of civilized society and a productive economy. Their absence or failure introduces an intolerable dimension of risk and hardship to everyday life, and a major obstacle to growth and competitiveness.”
Despite its importance, the two principal organizations that evaluate US infrastructure have given it consistently poor grades (at a “D” average) since the 1980s. The World Economic Forum ranks US infrastructure 13th in the world.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2017 Failure to Act report, total infrastructure spending is projected to fall $5.2 trillion short of what is required by 2040, as follows:
By their calculations, if the infrastructure investment gap is not addressed by 2025, the expected negative impact on the US GDP could total almost $4 trillion and result in a loss of 2.5 million jobs. This equates to a reduction of $3,400 per year in disposable income per US household.
Here are a few highlights of our findings.
Surface Transportation: The ASCE finds that surface transportation delays cost the country 6.9 billion vehicle-hours of delay in 2014 and $36 billion due to productivity loss. Three-quarters of commuters drive their own cars; but even where public transportation exists, such as metros, communities cannot easily access them. Our fastest train, Amtrak’s Acela Express, reaches a top speed of 150 mph but only averages 68 mph, compared to China’s Shanghai Maglev, which routinely reaches speeds of 267 mph and averages over 139 mph. The Maglev is only part of China’s 20,000 km of high-speed rail.
Water and Wastewater: We lose an average of seven billion gallons (about 16%) of our clean drinking water to leaks every day. Buried infrastructure can be a century old, and an average of 650 water mains fail every day.
Electricity: America has the highest number of outage minutes of any developed nation. Compared to the average Japanese consumer’s four minutes of blackouts per year, American consumers in the northeast lose power for an average of 214 minutes per year. Both the workforce and physical systems of our electrical infrastructure are approaching the age of retirement. Finally, the aging grid remains vulnerable to cyberattacks from our adversaries.
Impact of Climate Change: While power outages and potholes are annoying, perhaps the most critical vulnerability of our aging infrastructure is to climate change.
The US grid was designed to accommodate large, consistent sources of electricity such as coal and natural gas plants and is unequipped to deal with the variability of renewable energy generation. Wildfires in California have increased fivefold since 1972, with part of the blame falling on outdated electrical utility equipment. Increasingly fluctuating temperatures reduce the lifespan of asphalt, add stress to expansion joints on bridges, and cause buckling of railways. Over 85% of the country’s 100,000 miles of levees are privately owned without a standardized system for monitoring reliability. Many are a half-century old and are vulnerable to rising sea levels.
US infrastructure is maintained through the combined efforts of federal, state, and local government as well as the private sector. Addressing our growing infrastructure gaps and lack of global competitiveness will require increased spending and coordination by all parties. Please visit our specific recommendation for possible solutions.
Claire Kelly is a part-time researcher for OurFutureAmerica®. She studied Neuroscience and Anthropology at Union College, before completing a post-graduate fellowship in India where she worked with a rural development social enterprise. She is interested in how people and policy can drive both domestic and international rural development.