It’s one thing to build a nation. It’s something else to maintain it. The sorry state of America’s roads and bridges is a case in point.
The most recent report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) suggests 43 percent of the more than 4 million miles of America’s public roadways is in poor or mediocre condition. Of the more than 617,000 road bridges located across America—42 percent of which are now at least 50 years old—about 46,000 are in questionable order, suffering significant structural problems.
The ASCE estimates getting America’s road network back into shape will require an investment of about $560 billion. The Federal Highway Administration (FHA) admits that improving and maintaining the condition of road and bridge infrastructure will require an annual spend of $136 billion per year, or $2.7 trillion over 20 years. That includes spending $786 billion on clearing a backlog of highway and bridge repairs the FHA says could be economically justified for immediate implementation.
These numbers are big. But not scary big for a nation that has spent about $14 trillion just on its military during the past 20 years. In that context, the $621 billion the Biden administration proposes to spend over the next eight years on transportation infrastructure—not just roads and bridges but also public transit, ports, airports, and electric vehicle infrastructure—as part of its $2 trillion infrastructure spending package doesn’t seem exorbitant.
How did we let things get so bad? The simple answer is because we haven’t really valued what previous generations of Americans bought and paid for. We’ve taken the roads and bridges they built for granted, happily enjoying the benefits, while all too often skimping on essential maintenance. And now as those roads and bridges are wearing out, we’re complaining about the repair cost. People who survived a depression and a world war and were determined to build a better, brighter future would likely be shocked and dismayed at our cavalier treatment of their legacy.
The Interstate Highway System is perhaps the most enduring echo of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency. As a young Army officer, Eisenhower experienced America’s poor roads while traveling in an Army convoy across the country in 1919 (the journey took 62 days). Thirty-five years later, as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe at the end of World War II, he immediately grasped the strategic importance of Germany’s high-speed autobahnen in terms of the rapid deployment of troops and materiel.
We don’t like taxes, and we don’t like big government. But the brutal reality is the Interstate Highway System, which today totals 48,000 miles and accounts for one-quarter of the vehicle miles traveled in America each year, would never have existed without big government to build it and taxes to pay for it. Before the Federal Aid Highway Act, which kickstarted work on interstates in 1956, highways were a state responsibility, which of course meant there was no coordinated planning or construction. This resulted in the usual farcical results: In the mid-’50s, the Kansas Turnpike famously ended abruptly in a farmer’s field at the Oklahoma border.
Incredibly, the 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal tax on gasoline—and the 24.4-cents-a-gallon tax on diesel—that goes to the Highway Trust Fund to help pay for the repair and maintenance of the interstates hasn’t been increased since 1993, even though inflation has cut its purchasing power by 40 percent. What’s more, improvements in the fuel economy of the cars, trucks, and SUVs on America’s roads since then means there’s even fewer of these less valuable tax dollars collected per vehicle mile travelled.
America’s roads and bridges are the sinews that connect the country’s economic muscle, the arteries that enable the free and efficient flow of citizens and commerce. Construction of America’s interstate network was more than just road building on a grand scale; it was nation building. If our road and bridge decay is allowed to continue, what does that say about America today?