Connective Tissue
by Matt Mayrl on March 5, 2008 in All Politics is Local: An Urban Policy Blog
That’s how Bruce Katz refers to our nation’s infrastructure in a new opinion piece in this month’s Atlantic, which includes the graphic that illustrates the stresses on roads in and round our nation’s cities. This is a huge issue for cities today, impeding economic development and decreasing quality of life.
According to the article, the feds send state governments about $50 billion per year to be invested in roads and transit. So, here are the questions: Is this enough? Do we need even greater resources devoted to infrastructure? Or, is the real problem that states’ don’t target their investments well?
It’s possible that this problem is more the result of process/politics than of insufficient resources. Currently, the feds give transportation money to state departments of transportation, which then decide where to invest funds. Because of anti-urban biases in some state houses, cities may not be getting their fair share of transportation investments. So, cities either need to become more savvy in getting their share. Or, the feds need to incentivize states to allocate their transportation funds based on objective criteria such as congestion level and the economic costs it imposes.
Am I reading this right? Let me know if you come to a different conclusion…
(Click to enlarge.)
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