Infrastructure
it might be the one thing Americans can actually agree on.
Right across the country, roads, bridges, trains, water supplies and energy grids are all failing.
And it’s something U.S. presidents have vowed to fix for decades.
The bridges and highways we fail to repair today will have to be rebuilt tomorrow
at many times the cost.
Our roads, our bridges, our schools
It is also time to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure
America, this is how we truly build back better.
Now, some of those promises might finally be delivered on with the passage of this
massive 2,700 page, $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
America on Main Street and at the dinner table is talking about infrastructure,
when 20 years ago, they didn't even know what that meant.
So how did we get here, what makes this moment truly different,
and will this plan really be enough
to save America’s crumbling infrastructure?
In 2021, the US got a C- on the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card.
For those of you less familiar with the American grading system, that’s… not great when you’re
talking about a network that underpins the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people.
Civil engineers, what we do is largely unnoticed until something goes really wrong. And so,
you know, we've kind of been banging the drum and banging the drum, but people are like,
‘oh, I have clean water and my sewers work. And yeah, I hit a pothole once in a while,
but that's because the weather changes.’ And so there's been a lot of excuses because things
systemically haven't been failing, they're now getting to the point where the infrastructure,
you know, I laugh, it's not a mid-life crisis, it's an old age crisis.
It's impacting everyday Americans every day.
To understand how we got here, you need to know how infrastructure gets paid for in the U.S.
It varies by project, but typically some money comes from the federal budget, which is controlled
by Congress in Washington DC, and the rest is covered by
state and local governments or private companies.
That’s pretty different from European countries who primarily fund
their infrastructure through national governments.
According to a Brookings analysis, federal infrastructure spending in the U.S.
peaked in 1933, as FDR invested in the New Deal after the Great Depression.
President Roosevelt headed for the capitol by special train
to begin planning a billion and a half dollar relief program
That gave rise to programs like the Public Works Administration and projects like the Hoover Dam,
Laguardia Airport and the Lincoln Tunnel.
It also tackled some less iconic, but crucial upgrades,
like rural electrification and municipal water systems.
Economists say that investment in infrastructure is what helped lead
the country toward economic success in the years that followed.
You cannot build a modern economy on a crumbling infrastructure.
There was another spike in federal funding in the late 1950s during the Interstate Highway Era.
And then again in the 1970s when more comprehensive environmental
and community development efforts were introduced.
But since the 1980s, infrastructure has made up less and less of U.S. federal funding.
Today, only a quarter of public infrastructure money comes from the federal government, leaving
already struggling state and local governments to cover more of the costs and maintenance.
Globally, the U.S. has fallen behind other countries.
Look at this chart showing G20 countries projected infrastructure spending by 2040.
China is leading the pack, with just over 5% of its GDP going towards infrastructure.
The U.S. is all the way down here, at just 1.5%.
This new $1 trillion package would be the largest investment in decades,
but not quite as big as the spending under the New Deal.
Now that we’ve put this incredibly thrilling and easily digestible bill in context,
let’s get into what’s actually inside of it.
Remember, it’s 2,700 pages long so we can’t cover it all,
but let’s start with the basics – utilities.
Every two minutes a water main breaks in the US, and roughly 6 billion gallons
of treated water is lost every day. That's enough to fill over 9,000 swimming pools.
Meanwhile, safe drinking water isn’t a guarantee. Water quality in the US varies
from state to state, county to county, and can even depend on which street you live on.
Since 2014, Flint, Michigan has been synonymous with tainted water.
A group of largely unregulated toxic chemicals widely used for years
is now a growing threat to water safety in thousands of American communities.
The new bill would put $55 billion towards water and wastewater infrastructure.
That includes $15 billion to replace lead pipes and $10 billion to address contamination from a
chemical compound called PFAS, which is still technically legal to have in drinking water.
In recent years, widespread power outages have become more common.
Blackouts are estimated to cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars every year.
To address this, the bill puts forward $65 billion to improve the nation’s power grid,
and invest in things like carbon capture and clean hydrogen.
Next up we have transportation.
Only 5% of U.S. commuters use public transit to get to work.
The vast majority of people drive cars.
And depending on where you live, that could mean dodging potholes,
sitting in traffic jams, or navigating buckling pavement.
According to the White House, 173,000
miles of America’s highway and major roads and 45,000 bridges are in poor condition.
You’re one bad day away from a collapse where a lot of people die.
The bill provides $110 billion for roads and bridges,
with an extra $7.5 billion set aside to build electric vehicle charging stations.
Meanwhile, public transit systems could get $39 billion,
and Amtrak would get $66 billion to improve its 50-year-old rail service.
Don't forget, the president is a big fan of trains.
Poor infrastructure costs the average person $3,300 a year.
And that might mean, well, your power went out and you lost your
refrigerator and a freezer full of food and you've got to replace it.
You have a water line break somewhere,
you're either buying bottled water or you have boil water alerts.
There's even provisions for the further development and deployment of hyperloop
While many of these priorities like roads, bridges and water supplies may seem familiar,
this bill represents the first time both political parties have really
acknowledged that climate change is taking a toll on the nation’s infrastructure.
Tens of billions of dollars have been set aside to address floods,
wildfires, and drinking water shortages.
But as we know, a lot can go wrong when it comes to infrastructure.
The vision on the paper isn’t always what happens in reality.
And these things take time, but the urgency to get things done this time around does feel different.
I think in a matter of a couple of years, there's going to be a lot of
orange cones out there. People are going to see construction in a lot of different areas and will
see that their money is going to something in their neighbourhood.
America’s $1.2 trillion plan won’t be enough to solve everything.
There’s still a gap of nearly $2.6 trillion that’s needed to catch up to similar countries.
But the bill is an historic investment in US infrastructure and an opportunity
for the construction industry to leave its mark on a country for generations to come.
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