Decaying infrastructure will cost Houston households money

Investment would help

David Crossley, Aug 01, 11.

Long-term transportation needs, decaying roads, bridges, railroads and transit systems are costing the United States $129 billion a year, according to a report issued Wednesday by a professional group whose members are responsible for designing and building such infrastructure, says a story in the Washington Post.

Houston Engineer Wayne Klotz, president of Klotz Associates and past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, told Houston Tomorrow, “Every family in Houston will pay an additional $1,060 per year because of a declining transportation system.” He also noted that “With a modest national investment of $94 billion, the US could increase economic output by $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. In the City of Houston, that would mean additional economic output of more than $22 billion, and in the Houston region that number would be nearly $60 billion.”

According to the Post story:

“If investments in surface transportation infrastructure are not made soon, these costs are expected to grow exponentially,” the ASCE said. “Within 10 years, US businesses would pay an added $430 billion in transportation costs, household incomes would fall by more than $7,000, and US exports will fall by $28 billion.”

Deterioration of the US transportation system has been likened to an iceberg, with just the tip of an enormous obstacle to economic growth showing above the surface. The ASCE report contends that infrastructure failure already is dramatically affecting travel and commerce.”>“If investments in surface transportation infrastructure are not made soon, these costs are expected to grow exponentially,” the ASCE said. “Within 10 years, U.S. businesses would pay an added $430 billion in transportation costs, household incomes would fall by more than $7,000, and U.S. exports will fall by $28 billion.”

Deterioration of the US transportation system has been likened to an iceberg, with just the tip of an enormous obstacle to economic growth showing above the surface. The ASCE report contends that infrastructure failure already is dramatically affecting travel and commerce.

ASCE Update, August 4, 2011:

ASCE is revising figures reported in the release of its recent study on the economic impact of underinvestment in transportation infrastructure, Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Surface Transportation Infrastructure. The original report dramatically underreported the negative effect of Americans’ personal income due to failing transportation infrastructure. The report shows a clear and rapidly-expanding negative impact on Americans’ pocketbooks in both the near- and long-term , and a dramatically accelerating negative effect on GDP in the near- and long-term. Our original release projected that Americans’ personal income would drop by $930 billion by 2020 but recover slightly in 2040. The data clearly show that the effects will be dramatically more negative, with $3.1 trillion in personal income losses by 2040. The negative effects on American GDP will also expand dramatically over time, with a near-term loss of $897 billion and a near-tripling of that loss to $2.6 trillion by 2040.

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