Description

Smart cars and highways, high-speed trains and tiltrotor aircraft, drinking water treatment at the tap, low-flush toilets, and computer-directed sewer inspection robots—how these exotic-sounding technologies contrast with the traffic jams, potholes, sewer system overflows, and air pollution that regularly plague residents in major cities! Most of us take the services provided by public works for granted-until they malfunction at our expense. However, such complacence is foolish, considering the staggering size of our country’s investment in public works infrastructure. The value of the capital stock represented in the Nation’s roads, bridges, mass transportation, airports, ports, and waterways; and water supply, wastewater treatment, and solid waste disposal facilities is estimated to be about $1.4 trillion, slightly over 20 percent of the country’s total public and private capital stock. l Federal, State, and local governments currently spend about $140 billion annually on building, operating, and maintaining these facilities. If the infrastructure is so valuable, and technologies have such promise, why are so many public works systems across the United States outdated, inadequate, or poorly maintained?