Investigative series reinforces need to fix our roads, bridges

Frustrated Mahoning Valley drivers certainly did not need a comprehensive national investigation by the Associated Press to know that many roads and bridges in our little corner of America fail miserably to make the grade. They feel the pain daily on crater-filled roads and dilapidated bridges.

But that report, published in The Vindicator earlier this week, concretely drives home the severity of the problems, the impact they have on safety and economic growth and the pressing need for a properly funded action plan to correct the most severe deficiencies — sooner rather than later.

AP’s stories concluded that 20 percent of the nation’s 900,000 miles of interstates and major roads are in dire need of resurfacing or reconstruction and that 25 percent of its 600,000 bridges are in such poor condition that they are rated as structurally deficient or are considered to be functionally obsolete.

Such data reinforce why the United States now ranks 28th in the world in the quality of its infrastructure, according to Vice President Joe Biden. “The United States shouldn’t be 28th in anything,” he lamented recently to an audience in South Carolina.

In addition to the herky-jerky jolts that pothole-riddled and age-worn road surfaces inflict on the comfort and safety of motorists, our rotting infrastructure can fuel broad-based economic decline. After all, roads, highways and bridges provide a crucial support system to keep goods and services moving and America’s economy afloat.

Unfortunately, for too long, our aging infrastructure has often been viewed as the stepchild of public-policy priorities. As a result, abuse and neglect only festered.

Today, the stakes are so high that federal, state and local leaders must marshal up the will and political courage to find funding sources to begin making a dent in the $4 trillion repair job the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates it will take to bring our infrastructure up to snuff.

Overseas profits

One place to start is found in President Obama’s 2016 budget proposal. Its centerpiece is a six-year, $478-billion program to build and upgrade roads, bridges and other infrastructure elements. It would be financed by a one-time 14 percent tax on overseas profits and by closing loopholes that have allowed U.S. companies to shift profits to tax havens and avoid paying any tax on them for years.

Such an injection also can be justified by the shrinking assistance from Uncle Sam in recent years. Aid to states from the Federal Highway Trust Fund has declined 3.5 percent over a recent five-year period. At the same time, the amount of inflation-adjusted federal highway money dropped in every state except Alaska and New York, the AP reported.

In Ohio, where 42 percent of state roads rank in poor or mediocre condition costing motorists $1.68 million a year to repair, state transportation leaders and lawmakers should brainstorm formulas for assistance to local governments. Mahoning County, like most others in Ohio, remains caught in Catch-22 of declining federal revenue and staggering increases in costs for road and bridge maintenance. Road-salt costs, for example, skyrocketed about 500 percent over the past year alone.

Clearly, such problems will not fix themselves, and the longer they go ignored, the greater their threat to America’s health, safety and economic vitality. Therefore let the AP investigation sound the call for concerted action to repair, rebuild and revitalize our crumbling infrastructure.