Get Serious About Infrastructure

In this blog we won't just look at what doesn't work, but also highlight ideas on what does work:

A couple of weeks ago, Ed Rendell, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania,
came to Washington to talk up infrastructure. He is a member of a tripartisan threesome — along with Michael Bloomberg, New York’s independent mayor, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, California’s Republican governor — trying to persuade the
country to get serious about infrastructure.
In his talk, Mr. Rendell said he understood that the stimulus bill couldn’t come close to solving all these problems. But it could make some progress, and Mr. Obama’s
sky-high approval ratings gave him a wonderful chance to do so. “This is the
time to put down some markers — this is the time,” Mr. Rendell said.

And the (stimulus) bill does include a couple of markers. It will list on the Web the projects that the federal government is financing — an idea that, amazingly enough, is considered radical — and will require that mayors and governors sign off on projects. That will make it harder for them to lobby for projects now and criticize those same projects later, as Gov. Sarah Palin did with the Bridge to Nowhere. At least one version of the bill also sets aside $5.5 billion to be awarded by the transportation secretary, supposedly on the merits of a project.

But it’s not clear how that will work, and there is so much more that could be done. The bill could create a small-scale version of an “infrastructure bank,” a free-standing entity that could make more merit-based decisions than Congress does (an idea that Mr. Obama supports). The bill could also finance the creation of new state offices to conduct cost-benefit analyses. It could also help cover the budget shortfalls of public transit systems, instead of simply allocating another $30 billion for the construction of new highways.

Fifty-one transit systems have recently proposed service cuts or fare increases, including those in Atlanta, Denver, New York, Phoenix, St. Louis, San Diego and Washington. If these cuts go through, they will make it harder for people to get to work (or look for work), and they will undermine one of the long-term goals of the stimulus package: laying the groundwork for a greener economy.