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There are about 600K bridges in the US, and about ten percent are structurally deficient. We currently spend around $10-12 billion annually on bridge maintenance. To fix the ones with serious problems, we'd need to spend something like eight billion more. Should we tell Congress to find the money?
:lamoWe should force Mexico to pay for them. "Make America Great Again"
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There are about 600K bridges in the US, and about ten percent are structurally deficient. We currently spend around $10-12 billion annually on bridge maintenance. To fix the ones with serious problems, we'd need to spend something like eight billion more. Should we tell Congress to find the money?
Federal-aid Highway Program
The Federal-Aid Highway Program supports State highway systems by providing financial assistance for the construction, maintenance and operations of the Nation's 3.9 million-mile highway network, including the Interstate Highway System, primary highways and secondary local roads. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is charged with implementing the Federal-aid Highway Program in cooperation with the States and local government.
Local government - primarily counties, cities and towns, or local public agencies (LPAs) - own and operate about 75 percent, or roughly 2.9 million miles, of the Nation's highway network. LPAs build and maintain this network using a variety of funding sources, including the Federal-aid Highway Program. An estimated 7,000 LPAs manage about $7 billion annually in Federal-aid projects, or roughly 15 percent of the total program.
That's why understanding Federal-aid requirements is so important in the delivery of Federal-aid projects at the local level. Federal-aid Essentials highlights key components of the program to help LPAs and their State partners successfully manage locally administered Federal-aid projects.
There's more to repairing bridges and roads than just fussing at Congress to pass a funding bill.
It's the responsibility of the local and state governments to pay to repair bridges on local streets or state roads. The federal government only pays to repair bridges on USDOT FHwA Federal-aid Highways System.
Each program has a federal share and a state or local match. In the case of highway bridge replacement and/or rehabilitation, the federal share is 80%, which means that the local or state government has to come up with the other 20%. That 20% can be millions of dollars that local governments just don't have, and can't get. Go to page 75 (76 counting the cover) of this PDF document for more detail.
There's more to repairing bridges and roads than just fussing at Congress to pass a funding bill.
As we all saw vividly with the Obama Administration's "Shovel Ready Projects" that shovel ready projects don't exist. The truth is, we do need to repair our bridges - desperately. But, it isn't as easy or simple as many people would have you think it could be. If it were that simple, the bridges would have been repaired decades ago. Yet, the problem is not going to get better, it's just going to get worse, and more expensive as time goes on.
If we're going to do this, we must have a system to manage the money, the contracting, and the auditing. FHwA doesn't have that in place at a level that could handle such a major undertaking. The only government agency that could potentially take on such a project would be the USACE (US Army Corps of Engineers). However, the Corps' overhead added to most projects they manage is 35%-40%. That means that for every Billion Dollars of work done, the Corps would spend $400 Million in General, Administrative, and Overhead costs alone.
yep 100% agree. most of the infrastructure is owned by the states but we already tried the spend billions of dollars to fix stuff
and the states spent it on other things that is why the shovel ready jobs never occurred.
also what people fail to understand is that there has to be costing and analysis done. is it cheaper to repair or just build a new one.
usually the cost to repair is higher at times given all the new codes that have to be put in place. then you have to deal
with major traffic issues and delays.
the budgets on these things swell easily as very few times they are performance driven as they should be.
I have seen many a time that road repair/upgrade crews ( contracted construction companies ) often milk the government.
For instance they will tear up say 20 miles of road. they will remove layers of asphalt and then grade the road for their asphalt crew to come along.
Well by the time the repaving crew gets to the second half of that 20 miiles its been a week or so since it was graded and now wind and rain and whatever else has messed it up and now they have to regrade it again.
I think they do crap like that on purpose.
The reason shovel ready never happened is because there are laws regarding bidding, contracting, and then technical specifications that take a heck of a lot of time to accomplish - in other words, the proverbial Red Tape. States didn't spend highway money on other things. IF they did, the people that did so would be in federal prison, and the state would have had to reimburse the feds for the amount of money that was not spent correctly - that's according to other laws and regulations that control how federal funds are spent, audited, and accounted for (2 CFR 200 for instance).yep 100% agree. most of the infrastructure is owned by the states but we already tried the spend billions of dollars to fix stuff
and the states spent it on other things that is why the shovel ready jobs never occurred.
Agreed, and I alluded to that when referring to USACE.also what people fail to understand is that there has to be costing and analysis done.
That's probably correct in many instances.is it cheaper to repair or just build a new one.
Exactly, as in earthquake resistance codes, hurricane/tidal surge codes, flood plain resistance codes that have been implemented over the last 50 years (some of which were just updated this year).usually the cost to repair is higher at times given all the new codes that have to be put in place.
That's the only part that the average citizen even has a clue about, because it's in their face every day, and costs the government and the citizens through lost productive time.then you have to deal with major traffic issues and delays.
Agreed.the budgets on these things swell easily as very few times they are performance driven as they should be.
I'm not one to advocate "busy work" by the government, but I DO support upgrading and maintaining our infrastructure. It's our lifeline, and the work would be real with a real benefit. I would favor taking some money from "entitlement" programs and funding more infrastructure projects. This, I believe would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. We have a lot of bridges and roads and municipal utilities that honestly need maintenance and/or outright replacement. We could be doing this for years to come, provide legit jobs and reduce (direct) government dependency.There are about 600K bridges in the US, and about ten percent are structurally deficient. We currently spend around $10-12 billion annually on bridge maintenance. To fix the ones with serious problems, we'd need to spend something like eight billion more. Should we tell Congress to find the money?
It's the responsibility of the local and state governments to pay to repair bridges on local streets or state roads. The federal government only pays to repair bridges on USDOT FHwA Federal-aid Highways System.
There are about 600K bridges in the US, and about ten percent are structurally deficient. We currently spend around $10-12 billion annually on bridge maintenance. To fix the ones with serious problems, we'd need to spend something like eight billion more. Should we tell Congress to find the money?
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