Rand: Not Everything Is Broken

Not Everything Is Broken
The Future of U.S. Transportation and Water

Infrastructure Funding and Finance
Debra Knopman, Martin Wachs, Benjamin M. Miller, Scott G. Davis,

Katherine Pfrommer
C O R P O R AT I O N
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Preface
Federal investment in infrastructure has been receiving more attention than usual since the
Trump Administration and new Congress took office in January 2017. Not surprisingly, the
debate is largely about money: how to finance repairs, new roads, and other projects without
adding to the deficit, either by direct public spending or tax credits. Less discussed but no less
important are issues concerning the policies that support the mature and urban-centered econ-
omy that the United States has now—rather than the economy it had decades ago, when most
of the current terms of federal engagement were set. These issues are the focus of this report.
We frame the infrastructure debate around the case for modernizing federal policies
related to funding, finance, and project selection; recognizing the centrality of regional initia-
tives that transcend local government and state boundaries; and understanding different types
of financing—public, private, and public-private partnerships. The premise is that if compel-
ling public benefits can be articulated and financial incentives properly aligned on both the
public and private sides, appropriate investment and maintenance will follow. Poorly targeted
investment comes from poorly designed policy. Inadequate maintenance often is a symptom
of management and governance issues. This report examines current policy and considers pos-
sible improvements. Our intended audience includes members of Congress and their staffs,
and other public officials and their staffs at the local, state, and federal levels; private investors
and organizations committed to public-private partnerships; and the interested public.
This project was supported by Lovida H. Coleman Jr. and other RAND donors, income
from RAND’s endowment, and RAND’s program of self-initiated research.
RAND Infrastructure Resilience and Environmental Policy
This research reported here was conducted in the RAND Infrastructure Resilience and Envi-
ronmental Policy Program, which performs analyses on urbanization and other stresses. This
includes research on infrastructure development; infrastructure financing; energy policy; urban
planning and the role of public-private partnerships; transportation policy; climate response,
mitigation, and adaption; environmental sustainability; and water resource management and
coastal protection. Program research is supported by government agencies, foundations, and
the private sector.
This program is part of RAND Justice, Infrastructure and Environment, a unit of the
RAND Corporation dedicated to improving policy- and decisionmaking in a wide range of
policy domains, including civil and criminal justice, infrastructure development and financ-
ing, environmental policy, transportation planning and technology, immigration and border
iii
iv Not Everything Is Broken: The Future of U.S. Transportation and Water Infrastructure Funding and Finance
protection, public and occupational safety, energy policy, science and innovation policy, space,
and telecommunications.
Questions or comments about this report should be sent to the project leader, Debra
Knopman ([email protected]). For more information about the Infrastructure
Resilience and Environmental Policy Program, see www.rand.org/jie/irep or contact the direc-
tor at [email protected].
RAND Ventures
The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy
challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier
and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.
RAND Ventures is a vehicle for investing in policy solutions. Philanthropic contributions
support our ability to take the long view, tackle tough and often-controversial topics, and share
our findings in innovative and compelling ways. RAND’s research findings and recommenda-
tions are based on data and evidence, and therefore do not necessarily reflect the policy prefer-
ences or interests of its clients, donors, or supporters.
This venture was made possible by a generous gift by Lovida H. Coleman Jr. and other
RAND donors, income from RAND’s endowment, and RAND’s program of self-initiated
research.
Contents
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Figures and Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Summary and Recommendations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
U.S. Infrastructure: What Is the Problem?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Public Expectations of Infrastructure Investment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Approach to Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
How This Report Is Organized.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
CHAPTER TWO
Status of and Trends in Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Color of Money. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure: 2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Trends in Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Trends in Public Spending on Highways and Mass Transit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Trends in Public Spending on Water Utilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Trends in Private-Sector Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Findings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
CHAPTER THREE
Infrastructure Funding and Finance Mechanisms Currently in Use in the United States .. . . . . . 31
Who Ultimately Pays for Infrastructure?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Federal Models for Funding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
State and Local Funding and Finance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Rationale for Public-Private Partnerships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Findings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
CHAPTER FOUR
Federal Transportation Policy and Its Impact on Infrastructure Investment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Challenges of Building and Maintaining Transportation Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Features of Federal Policy and Programs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Issues in Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Conditions and Needs Assessments.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
v
vi Not Everything Is Broken: The Future of U.S. Transportation and Water Infrastructure Funding and Finance
Project Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Findings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
CHAPTER FIVE
Federal Water Policy and Its Impact on Infrastructure Investment .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Challenges of Building and Maintaining Water Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Relevant Features of Federal Policies and Programs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Conditions and Needs Assessments.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Project Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Findings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
CHAPTER SIX
Policy Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Desirable Characteristics of Infrastructure Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Recent Initiatives by the Federal Government.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Spending and Policy Changes Recently Proposed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
International Examples of Public-Private Partnership Models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Synthesis of Findings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
CHAPTER SEVEN
Summary of Findings and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Findings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Recommendations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Figures and Tables
Figures
S.1. Total Federal, State, and Local Spending on Infrastructure, 1956–2014, as a Share
of Gross Domestic Product. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
S.2. Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure as a Share of Gross
Domestic Product, by Type of Infrastructure, 1956–2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
2.1. Project Life Cycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2. Infrastructure Funding by Public and Private Sectors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3. Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, 2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4. Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, by Type, 2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5. Surface Transportation Funding Flows Among Levels of Government, 2012. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.6. Shares of Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, by Category,
2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.7. Shares of Public Spending for Capital and the Operation and Maintenance on
Transportation and Water Infrastructure, by Level of Government, 2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.8. Total Federal, State, and Local Spending on Transportation and Water
Infrastructure, 1956–2014.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.9. Total Federal, State, and Local Spending on Transportation and Water
Infrastructure, as a Share of Gross Domestic Product, 1956–2014.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.10. Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure as a Share of Gross
Domestic Product, by Type of Infrastructure, 1956–2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.11. Per Capita Federal, State, and Local Spending on Transportation and Water
Infrastructure, 1956–2014.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.12. Total Federal Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, 1956–2014. . . . . . . . 22
2.13. Total State and Local Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure,
1956–2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.14. Municipal Bond Issuance in USD Billions, 1996–2016. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.15. Total Federal Spending on Highways, 1956–2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.16. Trends in Vehicle-Miles Traveled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.17. Growth in Capital Funding for Mass Transit by Source, 2000–2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.18. Growth in O&M Funding for Mass Transit by Source, 2000–2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.19. Federal Spending Versus State and Local Spending on Water Infrastructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.20. Public-Private Partnership Investment in the U.S. Transportation Sector.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.1. Federal Spending on State Revolving Funds and Other Appropriations for Water
Infrastructure Grants.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2. State and Local Revenue from Transportation-Specific Sources as a Fraction of
Total State and Local Expenditure on Highways. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.3. Tax and Expenditure Limitations, 2010. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
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viii Not Everything Is Broken: The Future of U.S. Transportation and Water Infrastructure Funding and Finance
4.1. Disparities in Structurally Deficient Bridges Among Counties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

5.1. Trends in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Appropriations, 1960–2012.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.2. Trends in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Capital Stock, 1928–2009. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.3. Comparison of Needs Assessments for Water Utility Infrastructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Tables
2.1. Total Expenditures on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, 2014. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.1. Congressional Authorization Committees Responsible for Major Federal
Transportation and Water Infrastructure Programs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.2. Sources of TIFIA Loan Repayments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.1. Federal Cost-Sharing for Capital and O&M by Type of Water Infrastructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Summary and Recommendations
Infrastructure has become a popular topic, fueled by a widely held perception among the gen-
eral public and many elected officials that the nation’s infrastructure is crumbling as a conse-
quence of age and underinvestment. In fact, not all transportation and water infrastructure in
the United States is falling apart—far from it. While highway, bridge, and water system main-
tenance backlogs exist in many places, the data do not support a picture of precipitous decline
in total national spending or in the condition of the assets. Rather, the U.S. infrastructure
story is far more nuanced and challenging.
The purpose of infrastructure is to improve worker and business productivity and social
welfare. Money alone will not accomplish this goal; policy changes will also be required. Large
infusions of direct federal spending or tax credits to repair or build anew may do some good
by stimulating demand for construction services—even if the projects do not advance long-
term priorities or address differing needs across the country. The federal government should
focus its policies on incentivizing increased public and private spending on maintenance and
modernization where it is needed.
But increased spending will not fix what is broken in our approach to funding and financ-
ing public works—and not everything is broken. State and local governments are in the best
position to make needed improvements in the way struggling public transit and most other
infrastructure systems are governed. But the federal government has a role to play in more
ambitious regional initiatives to benefit the nation as a whole. Understanding the particulars of
where help and resources are needed should guide Congress, states, and cities in their delibera-
tions on policy changes, tax changes, and budgeting.
Core to understanding the problem is knowing who or what is responsible for a failure
to meet demand for improved infrastructure services. While the federal government has his-
torically played a large role at times, state and local governments shoulder the majority of the
burden. In 2014, state and local governments accounted for 62 percent of capital expenditures
and 88 percent of operations and maintenance (O&M) spending for transportation and water
infrastructure (Congressional Budget Office [CBO], 2015). While transportation and water
infrastructure are rarely considered together from a policy perspective, these two large infra-
structure sectors share characteristics that are particularly relevant in today’s policy debate:
dominant public ownership, extensive use of tax-exempt financing, and a tangled web of fed-
eral involvement.1 These patterns stand in marked contrast to the energy, telecommunications,
aviation, and freight rail sectors, which are dominated by private firms. In this report, we iden-
1 We use definitions consistent with those applied by CBO (2015). Water infrastructure includes containment systems
(dams, levees, reservoirs, and watersheds), sources of freshwater (lakes and rivers), and water utilities (supply and wastewater
treatment facilities). Transportation infrastructure includes highways (including bridges and tunnels), mass transit, rail,
aviation, and water transportation (ferries, inland waterways, and coastal ports).
ix
x Not Everything Is Broken: The Future of U.S. Transportation and Water Infrastructure Funding and Finance
tify the policies that promote and deter sustainment of and investment in U.S. transportation
and water infrastructure and suggest steps to better align them to public priorities.
Over the past 60 years, public spending on infrastructure has generally tracked the
growth of the U.S. economy. Total public spending on infrastructure as a share of gross domes-
tic product (GDP), normalized in 2014 dollars, has been relatively stable since 1956, as shown
in Figure S.1. Whether spending levels are adequate depends on the specifics.
Between 1964 and 1980, total public spending on highways decreased as a percentage of
GDP and has been relatively flat since then. Spending on mass transit, rail, water resources,
and water utilities as a percentage of GDP increased or remained relatively flat between 1980
and 2014, as shown in Figure S.2. Federal capital spending on highways has been declining
for decades since the building of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s and 1960s, even
as total vehicle-miles traveled has been increasing. For both transportation and water infra-
structure, total public spending and spending per capita generally rose until the 2008 financial
crisis, and there is ample evidence that spending has picked up again in many places. By the
end of 2016, municipal bond issues were at their highest levels ever, more than doubled from
1996; however, uncertainty in federal policy has driven bond issues down in 2017. Industry
analysts project that spending in the water and wastewater utility sector alone will exceed
$532 billion over the next ten years, a 28 percent increase over the previous decade (Nabers,
2016). If this new spending materializes at a rate of around 2.5 percent annually above infla-
tion, the spending shortfalls in the water sector projected by the American Society of Civil
Engineers (2013) and others would largely disappear. The U.S. Department of Transportation
(DOT) projected that increasing spending on highways and bridges by around 2.8 percent
Figure S.1
Total Federal, State, and Local Spending on Infrastructure, 1956–2014, as a Share of Gross Domestic
Product
3.5
3.0
2.5
Percentage of GDP
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0
1956 1961 1966 1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011
Year
SOURCE: CBO, 2015, Exhibit 3, p. 10, based on data from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB),
the U.S. Census Bureau, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
RAND RR1739-S.1
Summary and Recommendations xi
Figure S.2
Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure as a Share of Gross Domestic Product,
by Type of Infrastructure, 1956–2014
Highways Mass transit and rail

2.0 2.0
1.5 1.5
1.0 1.0
0.5 0.5
Percentage of GDP
0 0
Water resourcesa Water utilitiesb
2.0 2.0
1.5 1.5
1.0 1.0
0.5 0.5
0 0
1956 1964 1972 1980 1988 1996 2004 2012 1956 1964 1972 1980 1988 1996 2004 2012
Year
SOURCE: CBO, 2015, Exhibit 15, p. 25, based on data from OMB, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the U.S. Bureau of
Economic Analysis.
a
Includes water containment systems (dams, reservoirs, and watersheds) and freshwater (lakes and rivers).
b
Includes water supply and wastewater treatment facilities.
RAND RR1739-S.2
annually above inflation through 2032 would eliminate the projected maintenance backlog
(DOT, Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration, 2016).
In fact, the perception that U.S. infrastructure needs are not being met, which animates
so much of the debate over spending, requires reexamination. These “needs gaps” are calcu-
lated in different ways. For water infrastructure, some needs are derived from estimates of
repair frequency required to maintain a regulatory standard, given factors such as population
growth and age of the system. Other estimates use survey data to collect information on self-
reported costs of planned future projects. The adequacy of pricing and cost-recovery methods
across state and local governments can alter the view of needs as well. The bottom line is that
needs assessments offer an unreliable guide for policy and priority setting.
State and local O&M spending for both highways and water infrastructure has risen
steadily since at least 1956. The system of financing new and major rehabilitation projects
through public borrowing and, to a much lesser extent, some version of public-private part-
nerships (PPPs) is generally working for projects that fall within single states and local juris-
dictions and for which revenues are sufficient to cover debt service and ongoing O&M costs.
Infrastructure tends to be well maintained and modernized in areas where local and regional
economies are thriving, good governance is the rule, and revenue streams for sustainable O&M
cost recovery are in place.
Elsewhere, problems persist that defy easy solutions:
xii Not Everything Is Broken: The Future of U.S. Transportation and Water Infrastructure Funding and Finance
• The federal Highway Trust Fund and the state funds for drinking water and wastewater
treatment plants have not been operating on a sustainable basis for some time now.
• Congestion on some interstate highways and freight transportation systems hurts regional
economies.
• Without operating subsidies, mass transit systems have a hard time paying their way.
• Critical infrastructure problems that cross jurisdictional lines, like the proposed Gateway
rail tunnel under the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York, are proving dif-
ficult to resolve through existing governance arrangements.
• Communities with declining tax bases struggle to maintain their roads, bridges, and
water systems and repay their debts to bond holders.
• Some communities are at risk of flooding from structurally compromised dams and
levees, coastal communities are at risk from rising seas and changing patterns of pre-
cipitation, and many communities are vulnerable to flooding from undersized and aging
storm water systems.
Each place has its own blend of issues with infrastructure maintenance or investment,
economics or governance. Dysfunction arises from many sources. An across-the-board ramp-
up of federal spending is unlikely to solve the infrastructure problems that need fixing—
regardless of whether the money comes through direct funding, tax credits to private devel-
opers, or a combination. Lasting changes will require thoughtful consideration of targeted
spending priorities, policy constraints, and regional differences.
Though state and local governments are responsible for many pieces of this mosaic, Con-
gress could take a number of steps in conjunction with states, local governments, and the pri-
vate sector to improve the condition, funding, and sustainability of U.S. infrastructure (see
text box).
To maintain stable financing for infrastructure, Congress should preserve the federal
tax exemption on interest earned from municipal bonds for at least the next decade.
During this period, lawmakers should reinstate taxable Build America Bonds (BABs) and
experiment with other financing alternatives. The aim is to draw as much capital into infra-
structure as the market demands without the distortion of tax policies that favor one class of
investors over another.
Tax-exempt municipal bonds are an inefficient means of subsidizing local government
borrowing for infrastructure projects. Still, the $3.7 trillion market for these bonds provides
stable financing to local governments. In the interest of continuity, tax-exempt municipal bonds
should be kept while alternative funding mechanisms are given a chance to develop. Congress
successfully experimented with BABs in 2009 and 2010. These offer one potential alternative.
BABs can be structured to be revenue-neutral. Public pension funds and other investor classes
receive no benefit from municipal bonds’ tax exemption because they have either no or low
tax liabilities. But BABs would allow their “patient” capital to be put to work funding low-risk
infrastructure projects with long payback periods and competitive returns.
Therefore, BABs should be reinstated for a ten-year period with the assurance that the
subsidy, at whatever level set by Congress, will be honored over the life of the bonds. At the
end of the ten-year period, Congress should assess the impacts on state and local infrastruc-
ture spending and the federal budget and determine whether to maintain the status quo, make
BABs permanent, or cap or eliminate the municipal bond exemption.
Summary and Recommendations xiii
Ten Recommendations to Congress on Infrastructure

Tax-Exempt Bonds
Preserve the federal tax exemption on interest earned from municipal bonds for at least the
next decade. Tax-exempt municipal bonds are needed to give state and local governments contin-
ued stable access to capital while alternative financing mechanisms are developed.
Taxable Bonds
Reinstate Build America Bonds with taxable interest for a ten-year period and experiment
with other financing alternatives. Draw as much capital into infrastructure as the market demands
without the distortion of tax policies that favor one class of investors over another.
Sustainable Revenues for Transportation
Support further state experimentation with approaches to mileage-based fee collection, with
an eye toward transitioning to a new federal system that more effectively links revenue collection to
highway use.
Long-Term Priorities
Target longer-term projects likely to produce significant national benefits. Fund transportation
and water improvements that will increase productivity and resilience over merely “shovel-ready”
projects.
Capital
Focus on capital investment, including major investments in renewal of aging infrastructure
and new infrastructure incorporating advanced technologies. Make life-cycle cost analysis and
sustainability of investments through appropriate pricing and cost recovery a condition of future
federal transportation and water funding for state and local governments.
Maintenance
Prioritize maintenance of federal assets, such as mission-critical military bases, dams, levees,
locks, national parks, and other vital federal infrastructure.
Resilience
Make resilience to natural disasters and adaptation to rising seas, increasing flood frequency,
and other changing climate impacts a condition for capital spending for the purpose of reduc-
ing future federal spending on disaster assistance.
Efficiency
Streamline the regulatory review process among multiple federal agencies. Efficiencies can be
gained while honoring environmental and safety standards.
More Efficiency
Consolidate the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation into an
integrated national water resource agency.
Innovation
Fund competitive grants for research, development, and deployment of new technologies.
Expand existing grant programs to stimulate innovation in engineering, construction, maintenance,
and operations of transportation and water systems.
xiv Not Everything Is Broken: The Future of U.S. Transportation and Water Infrastructure Funding and Finance
“Shovel-ready” projects are not necessarily priority projects. Rather than using
“shovel-ready” as the criterion for federal capital investment in nonfederal assets, as was
done in the 2009 stimulus package, Congress should instead target longer-term proj-
ects likely to produce significant national benefits. Congress should work with the White
House, states, and local governments to generate a list of regional infrastructure investments
that would increase productivity and bring demonstrable improvements in transportation and
water services. Each proposed project should undergo rigorous, transparent benefit-cost and
life-cycle analyses to enable ranking of projects based on consistent estimates of multistate or
national-level net benefits. For example, passenger connections among rail, transit, and air-
ports and freight connections among trucks, rail, and ports are critical nodes in the U.S. trans-
portation infrastructure. Improvements could offer real economic gains in the form of higher
economic productivity. Priority should be given to projects with compelling multijurisdictional
health, safety, and environmental benefits and to those state and local governments that work
together to identify their top priorities for federal capital spending. Federal funding would be
conditional on regional sponsors securing matching funds from any combination of public and
private sources, including user fees and taxes when appropriate.
The federal government should focus its capital investment on major investments
in renewal of aging infrastructure and new infrastructure for the coming decades. To
this end, Congress should make life-cycle cost analysis and sustainability of investments
a condition of future federal transportation and water funding. Not everything that has
ever been built warrants perpetual maintenance. Some infrastructure may need to be disman-
tled in response to changing demographics, economics, or public priorities. Under our system
of federalism, state and local governments are empowered to make their own choices on these
matters. However, federal infrastructure spending should be conditional on state and local
governments demonstrating their ability to maintain new or renovated assets. Assuming exist-
ing infrastructure is worth maintaining, more capital spending enabled by the federal govern-
ment in the absence of sustainable O&M funding for existing assets will make matters worse
for local governments struggling to make payments on existing debts.
Congress should place its highest maintenance priorities on vital federal assets. The
federal government has a responsibility to properly maintain its own vast infrastructure man-
aged by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation, the National Park Service, and other agencies with resource management and
national security responsibilities. Priorities for direct federal spending should be set based on
public safety, national security, and national economic and environmental benefits. Examples
include mission-critical military bases and federally owned dams, levees, locks, and national
parks and recreation areas around national forests, wildlife refuges, and historic sites.
Congress should require each agency to report on its estimate of funding needs over the
next 25 years to sustain the infrastructure under its jurisdiction. Agencies should be required
to describe the analytical process by which they have chosen whether to maintain, recapitalize,
perform only minimal maintenance, or divest their holdings. This would be the foundation of
a federal capital budget to be updated on an as-needed basis.
Congress should condition capital funding on state and local governments’ efforts
to incorporate resilience to natural disasters and adaptation to rising seas and other
climate trends. The dollar value of damage from extreme weather events has quadrupled in
real terms over the past four decades. New spending creates an opportunity to make design
changes in old infrastructure or rethink infrastructure concepts entirely to meet new condi-
Summary and Recommendations xv
tions. Following the lead of many states and cities, Congress should embed resilience guide-
lines in federal infrastructure investment through statutory means. Well-executed resilience
measures have the potential to constrain or reduce spending on the growing federal cost of
disaster assistance, which the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated to
have been at least $277 billion between fiscal years 2005 and 2014, and is likely to rise in the
future (GAO, 2016).
Congress should support state and local governments in their development of
common standards for structuring public-private partnerships. The U.S. experience with
PPPs in the realm of transportation and water infrastructure has been mixed, with success
largely hinging on the skill of state and local negotiators in balancing the benefits and financial
risks to the public. From the perspective of private investors, the market for such investments
is fragmented and fraught with political risks and uncertainties in project timing. Navigating
different rules across the states is a burden on investors and adds to political uncertainties. The
federal government could provide technical assistance and help with tax issues and permitting
processes.
The federal government should streamline regulatory approval processes involving
multiple federal agencies while honoring applicable environmental, health, and safety
standards. Consensus-building around major infrastructure investment is a challenging busi-
ness in a democratic society when multiple public objectives are in play—and often in conflict
with one another. As part of the U.S. system of checks and balances on government power,
administrative processes are designed to enable stakeholders to engage, review, and intervene
in regulatory decisions on grounds of protecting health, safety, and the environment. Trying to
circumvent public participation and undermine widely supported protections and standards in
the name of speeding up infrastructure projects can result in delay or gridlock. But sometimes
multiple agencies regulate sequentially and without coordination. Experience has shown that
efficiencies can be gained by consolidating information gathering and organizing collaborative,
concurrent public outreach and review processes among agencies, as recommended in 2015 by
the Build America Investment Initiative Interagency Working Group.
Congress should end the historical division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and consolidate them into a single federal water
resource agency. Consolidation would impose consistency in exercising the federal role in
water infrastructure and its maintenance; enable a more integrated and fair approach to water
resource management in partnership with states, local governments, and other stakeholders;
and bring the water infrastructure programs of the two agencies under the same congressional
oversight. Consolidating the transportation modal administrations into a more unified and
integrated U.S. Department of Transportation also might be more efficient, but would likely
be more difficult to implement because of the multiplicity of private and public interests and
regulatory responsibilities served across the various modal administrations. Government reor-
ganizations come with large costs. These costs need to be carefully weighed against the poten-
tial benefits of consolidating technical expertise and encouraging integrated water resource and
transportation management.
Congress should place some big bets on research, development, and deployment
of new technologies to support infrastructure construction and maintenance. We pro-
pose an infrastructure research agenda that would build on the competitive peer-reviewed
grant mechanisms already in place with the Transportation Research Board. This should be
expanded into an integrated infrastructure research program that crosses sectoral lines and
xvi Not Everything Is Broken: The Future of U.S. Transportation and Water Infrastructure Funding and Finance
coordinates the needs and resources of individual agencies across the federal government. The
agenda would stimulate the development of new concepts of provisioning of infrastructure and
improve building methods and materials, engineering designs, cost-effectiveness and efficiency,
and all aspects of system operations.
Widespread adoption of newer construction methods, more durable and sustainable
materials, and sensor technologies could have a profound effect on the calculus of infrastruc-
ture maintenance. Advances have been made in new materials that could extend the lives of
roads, bridges, and pipes. New road coverings have been developed and are in use elsewhere
in the world. Sensors could help pinpoint maintenance needs and operational concerns. Road
technologies must adapt to the age of driverless vehicles. Smart roads, long a dream of trans-
portation experts, are not far away: We already have ground-penetrating radars and embedded
sensors that can report on the condition of infrastructure in real time. Current policies and
funding mechanisms will require changes to encourage more transitional experiments and
pilot projects.
Improving the capacity to govern and make analytically supportable decisions across juris-
dictional lines ought to be a research priority as least as high as those topics above relating to
new technologies. Research in the social and behavioral sciences could help to inform changes
in how local, state, and regional governmental bodies tackle the difficult cross-jurisdictional
decisions on infrastructure operations and investment.
Acknowledgments
This project was funded in part through RAND’s program of self-initiated research. We are
grateful to Susan Marquis, dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School and Vice President
of Innovation at RAND, and Howard Shatz, director of RAND-Initiated Research, for their
guidance and support. The authors also wish to thank Lovida H. Coleman Jr. for her interest
and foresight in supporting a project related to infrastructure policy and her long-standing ser-
vice as a RAND trustee and advisory board member.
We were fortunate to have the benefit of critical reviewers who pointed out many instances
in the earlier version of the report in which we could usefully sharpen our focus and improve
the readability of the report. Our reviewers included RAND economist Nicholas Burger; G.
Tracy Mehan III, Executive Director of Government Affairs with the American Water Works
Association; and David Levinson, formerly a professor in the Civil, Environmental, and Geo-
engineering Department of the University of Minnesota and currently in the School of Engi-
neering at the University of Sydney. Special thanks to RAND colleagues Sonni Efron for
bringing her considerable editorial skills to bear, Liisa Ecola for her careful reading and critique
of the report, and Kate Giglio, who also helped us to better shape our narrative. In the end, the
authors are wholly responsible for any errors and omissions that remain.
xvii
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Infrastructure has become a popular policy topic, fueled by warnings that the nation’s infra-
structure is “crumbling.”1 Government underspending is usually cited as the cause of deterio-
rating highways, bridges, rail lines, dams, and water supplies (Appelbaum, 2017). The typical
remedy is to increase public spending, with the federal government leading the way (Office of
Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2017; Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., 2017). An alternative to
new federal funding, advocated for a time by President Donald Trump, is to provide tax credits
to private investors.2
Many economists and public officials, joined by the construction industry and trade
unions, say that rebuilding or building new infrastructure will stimulate the national economy
by boosting demand and increasing efficiency, put people back to work, and revitalize cities
and towns (Myers-Lipton, 2009, 2015). At a time of historically low interest rates and low fuel
costs, which lower construction costs, infrastructure spending is an attractive proposition.
Other economists caution, however, that some of these prospective benefits are likely to, at
best, be modest and short-lived, and, at worst, lead to misallocation of capital—particularly
in a mature economy whose networks of highways, rail, and other infrastructure have largely
been built out (Popper and Gates, 2016). They point out that what is needed most is basic
maintenance and repair of the infrastructure we already have and plans to raise enough money
to keep it viable in the long term (Jaffe, 2016).
Largely missing from the current debate are clear and compelling answers to three fun-
damental questions:
• Why is demand for better-maintained infrastructure and new investment not being met
under current policies, funding, and market conditions?
• What are efficient and equitable ways to identify and act on regional and national infra-
structure priorities?
1 Typical headlines: “Falling Apart: America’s Neglected Infrastructure” (Kroft, CBS News, November 23, 2014; “Amer-
ica’s Infrastructure Is Crumbling: Shortfalls in Investment will Lead to Fewer Jobs, Gridlock, and Inevitable Catastrophe,”
(Dennison, Slate, October 7, 2013). The opening phrase of then-President-elect Trump’s infrastructure plan was “Trans-
form America’s crumbling infrastructure” (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., 2017).
2 Then-President-elect Trump stated that $8 billion in “infrastructure tax credits” will generate $226 billion in private
investment in infrastructure (Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., 2017). President Trump’s fiscal year (FY) 2018 budget
calls for $200 billion in “new” direct spending and $206 billion in budget cuts to existing infrastructure programs (The
White House, Office of Management and Budget [OMB], 2017). In late September 2017, the President told members of
Congress that he was abandoning this plan (Newmyer and Paletta, 2017).
1
2 Not Everything Is Broken: The Future of U.S. Transportation and Water Infrastructure Funding and Finance
• What strategies are likely to improve on current practice, and what policy changes, pri-
marily at the federal level, could remedy some of the problems identified?
In this report, we seek to answer these questions in a way that can inform federal and
state efforts to modernize outdated policies and stimulate productive investment. This report
is not a catalogue of national infrastructure needs—which it turns out are difficult to estimate
in the absence of clear policy and evaluation criteria. Rather, we examine the status of and
trends in infrastructure spending and policies that promote or deter investment, and consider
actions that could better align policies to public infrastructure priorities. To the extent that
demand for more and better-maintained infrastructure is outstripping supply, we hypothesize
that this is a symptom of pricing and other policies in need of change, as well as local economic
conditions.
We focus on transportation and water infrastructure for three reasons. First, most spend-
ing on transportation, water, and wastewater infrastructure is done by the public sector, and
these are the structures whose status dominates the public debate about underinvestment.
The private sector’s role is diverse but limited, ranging from loaning money to governments to
finance construction to footing the bill in exchange for the ability to collect user fees or other
benefits. (In contrast, private investors dominate infrastructure spending for energy, telecom-
munications, and freight rail.) Second, transportation and water are the sectors in which the
federal government has historically played a dominant role in funding, policy, and regulation.
Third, Congress and the states tend to treat transportation and water infrastructure policy and
funding as separate issues, but we aim to show that there is value in comparing and contrast-
ing the federal role in these sectors and asking whether their differences can still be justified.
Finally, the White House and Congress are considering omnibus tax and spending proposals
that would apply across infrastructure types.
The next section of this chapter describes how issues related to infrastructure are typically
framed according to varying perspectives. We then briefly describe the analytic methods used
to delve deeper into the problem, and outline the remainder of the report.
U.S. Infrastructure: What Is the Problem?
The problem with infrastructure in the United States is often cast as one of underinvestment:
Public and private spending is less than it should be, given the known benefits of improved
economic productivity that would accrue. In 2014, the Department of the Treasury painted
a grim picture of the consequences of underinvestment (U.S. Department of the Treasury,
Office of Economic Policy, 2014, p. 1; footnotes are from the original):
The costs of underinvestment in infrastructure are massive. Drivers in the United States
annually spend 5.5 billion hours in traffic resulting in costs of $120 billion in fuel and
lost time.3 U.S. businesses pay $27 billion in additional freight costs because of the poor
conditions of roads and other surface transportation infrastructure.4 The electric grid’s low
resilience leads to weather-related outages that cost the U.S. economy between $18 bil-
3 National Economic Council and President’s Council of Economic Advisors, 2014.

4 National Economic Council and President’s Council of Economic Advisors, 2014.
Introduction 3
lion and $33 billion each year, on average.5 Due to continuing deterioration of water sys-
tems throughout the United States, each year there are approximately 240,000 water main
breaks resulting in property damage and expensive service interruptions and repairs.6
These numbers matter because persistent underinvestment in infrastructure could be a

drag on the U.S. economy.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that there exists a $2.1 tril-
lion gap between spending and “need” for transportation infrastructure and a $257 billion gap
for water infrastructure for 2016 through 2025 (ASCE, 2016).7 ASCE further estimates that
failure to make the investments it identifies will trim $4 trillion off of the U.S. gross domestic
product (GDP) between 2016 and 2025. ASCE also suggests that the burden of the under-
investment falls disproportionately on the most disadvantaged communities, with an aver-
age annual loss of $3,400 per household (ASCE, 2013b). These losses, according to ASCE’s
researchers, come from higher costs of goods and services, lower employment due to increased
business costs, and slower commutes for individuals.
The Department of the Treasury’s and ASCE’s numbers are of course conditional on
many assumptions, most importantly on how much of existing U.S. infrastructure actually
warrants continued maintenance, how much should be substantially rehabilitated or rebuilt,
and how much new investment should be made to support economic growth and increased
productivity. Each of these assumptions requires deep knowledge of the particulars of the
infrastructure itself, the community and region where it exists, and larger economic and tech-
nological conditions and trends. The past is not necessarily prologue when it comes to mainte-
nance and investment in infrastructure.
Who Pays for Public Works, and Why?

Core to understanding the infrastructure problem in the United States is understanding who
or what is responsible for the investment and maintenance and how we know whether the
United States as a whole or cities, states, and regions in particular are spending too little, the
right amount, or too much. Markets answer these questions for the vast majority of invest-
ments in the economy, but the kinds of infrastructure we call “public works” cannot always
meet a market test that would make them attractive to private investors. When they do, there
is no compelling reason for scarce public capital to displace abundant private capital, as long
as public interests are served and protected in the process—a critical caveat. Public works proj-
ects, at their best, generate benefits across a broad set of public objectives, but these benefits
can be diffuse and difficult to monetize. This defining feature of public works is also a chal-
lenge: Partial or even full cost recovery is achievable through user fees, but in many places this
is politically unpalatable (World Bank Group, Public Private Partnership in Infrastructure
Resource Center, 2016; Ivory, Protess, and Palmer, 2016).
5 President’s Council of Economic Advisors, U.S. Department of Energy, and White House Office of Science and Tech-
nology, 2013.
6 U.S. Department of the Treasury and U.S. Department of Transportation, Build America Investment Initiative Inter-
agency Working Group, 2015.
7 ASCE defines transportation infrastructure as including surface transportation, airports, and rail. ASCE defines water
infrastructure as including water and wastewater infrastructure, levees, dams, inland waterways, and marine ports. ASCE’s
definitions of transportation and water infrastructure differ from CBO’s definitions.
In the United States, infrastructure has been financed and built with public funding,
private capital, and, in some cases, a mix of funding sources. State and local governments cur-
rently shoulder the largest burden: In 2014, 62 percent of capital expenditures for transpor-
tation and water infrastructure and 88 percent of spending on operations and maintenance
(O&M) came from state and local governments (Congressional Budget Office [CBO], 2015).
While some infrastructure can be financed privately when revenue streams can be read-
ily identified and tapped to pay bond- or shareholders (common practice for the heavily regu-
lated sectors of electricity, telecommunications, rail, and water distribution), the vast majority
of transportation- and water-related projects produce more diffuse economic and social ben-
efits that cannot be fully or easily captured through direct charges, taxes, or user fees (U.S.
Department of Transportation [DOT], Federal Highway Administration, Office of Innova-
tive Program Delivery, 2013; DeGood, 2016). In these cases, federal, state, and local govern-
ments increasingly turn to general revenues collected through income, sales, and other types
of broad-gauge taxes to fund these investments directly or through provision of tax credits
(Henchman, 2014). The justification is that all taxpayers indirectly gain from broad economic
benefits that accrue from a project.
Patterns of finance and funding of infrastructure are diverse, as illustrated by a few exam-
ples. Most of Interstate 95 was built with 90 percent of its funding from the federal Highway
Trust Fund, fed by taxes on motor fuels collected from motorists throughout the country,
and 10 percent state trust funds and general revenues. Other parts of I-95 are old toll roads,
financed and built by states before the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 (Pub L. 84-627) was
passed (Weingroff, 2015). The rebuilding of the earthquake-damaged Bay Bridge between San
Francisco and Oakland was funded by tolls on motorists using bridges in the Bay Area and
additional general funds from the State of California; no federal money was used (California
Department of Transportation, 2016). The federal government subsidizes intercity passenger
rail (Amtrak). The renovation and modernization of Washington, D.C.’s Union Station in the
1980s was funded through the largest public-private partnership (PPP) undertaken up to that
time (National Council for Public-Private Partnerships, no date).
City water supply and distribution systems are typically financed using municipal bonds
paid from fees on residents and businesses based on their water use (U.S. Conference of
Mayors, Mayors Water Council, 2007; Copeland, 2016). The federal government’s role in city
water supplies is minimal in the eastern United States—but dominant in the western states
through the massive public works projects of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and its
provision of municipal water supplies for cities including Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, and Salt
Lake City (Reisner, 1986).
Ownership and maintenance arrangements are similarly diverse. Some infrastructure is
operated and maintained by public agencies, and others by private firms. In Allegheny County,
Pennsylvania, operation of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority was outsourced to a
French company called Veolia (Lurie, 2016), an arrangement that has since ended. In contrast,
the county’s sewer authority (ALCOSAN) functions as a consortium of 83 jurisdictions in the
county, including Pittsburgh. Bridges are maintained by many local jurisdictions. The freight
rail lines running through Pittsburgh are in private hands, whereas waterways around the city
are maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).
Pinning down who is responsible for spending or underspending on infrastructure is
more complicated as a matter of public policy than first meets the eye.
Introduction 5
Often-Cited Supply-Side Issues

Many arguments have been advanced over the years to account for the perceived inadequacies
of transportation and water infrastructure. Some of these arguments relate to constraints on
the supply side.
Concerns About the National Debt
Infrastructure is expensive. Over the past several decades, debates framed around the ade-
quacy of public spending on infrastructure have soon become arguments about raising taxes
or increasing the deficit. However, there are economic costs to focusing on the size of public
expenditure to the exclusion of closer scrutiny of policies and practices that impose a drag on
investment (Berman, 2015; Hornyak, 2013; Morrow, 2016).
It took the financial crisis of 2008 to spur the last spike in spending on infrastructure. In
2009, the Obama Administration reached agreement with Congress on a $787 billion stimu-
lus package that became known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
(ARRA; Pub L. 111-5).8 President Trump initially proposed spending $200 billion in direct
federal spending, cutting more than $200 billion in existing infrastructure programs, and
offering as much as $800 billion in tax credits on infrastructure (Viser and McGrane, 2017),
but has since tempered his expectation of a significant role for private-sector investment. Under
very different economic conditions in 2017 than those that prevailed in 2009, some mem-
bers of Congress have expressed concerns about substantial new direct public spending and
instead favor large tax cuts to stimulate broader demand throughout the economy (Viser and
McGrane, 2017).
Red Tape
For years, many advocates of increased infrastructure spending, as well as academics, have
maintained that lengthy local, state, and federal environmental reviews of major projects
impede construction and are a cause of underspending. They argue that “streamlining” regula-
tory review processes to reduce the number of decision points at all levels of government would
speed planning and construction.9 However, one person’s bureaucratic delay is another person’s
legitimate processing to vet large public spending projects for compatibility with community
values, environmental protection, health, and safety.
Political Reluctance to Seek Full Cost Recovery
The decision to raise mass transit fares, bridge tolls, or water rates to meet operating expenses
and cover capital improvements is almost always politically fraught, particularly when disasso-
ciated from routine adjustments for inflation. To avoid these choices and spread the costs over
a larger population, local and state officials increasingly revert to using general revenue funds
that come from broad-based taxes (Henchman, 2014). Yet, reliance on sales taxes and other
general revenues to pay for infrastructure imposes a proportionally larger burden on lower-
income residents.
8 See Grabell (2012) for more detail.

9 On February 24, 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order 13777, directing all federal agencies to create task
forces to recommend repeal, replacement, or modification of existing regulations (O’Keefe, 2016; Mandel and Carew, 2013;
U.S. Department of the Treasury and U.S. Department of Transportation, Build America Investment Initiative Interagency
Working Group, 2015).
Often-Cited Demand-Side Issues

Discerning what is needed to increase productivity and social benefits from what is desired—
the demand side of infrastructure—is a problem for the public and private sectors. Emerging
technologies such as driverless vehicles, shifts in populations that alter driving and expecta-
tions for mobility, and changing economic conditions within regions can affect forecasts of the
timing and volume of demand for transportation services. Uncertainties in demand can have a
large effect on the economics and risk profile of a proposed project and consequently dampen
the support of public officials and investors.
The Difficulty of Forecasting Demand
In ordinary and well-functioning markets, suppliers discern demand signals through consum-
ers’ willingness to pay and respond accordingly. But when communities or businesses want
infrastructure, their demands are filtered through often complicated and multilayered gover-
nance arrangements and competing public goals and preferences—rarely with clarity. Fore-
casting demand, cost, and willingness to pay for new or improved infrastructure is a highly
uncertain business, with an unimpressive track record (Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius, and Rothengatter,
2003). For technical reasons, cost and demand forecasts are characterized by large errors. It has
been documented that where public funds are available in competitive situations, demand fore-
casts are influenced by the desire to compete effectively by demonstrating higher demand and
lower cost than might be justified by prudent forecasters (Jahren and Ashe, 1990). In addition,
demand for transportation services, for example, can vary over the lifespan of infrastructure
as new technologies and business models emerge, demographics shift, and the nature of work
changes (Flyvbjerg, 2012).
In the absence of clear market signals, public agencies and organizations develop needs
assessments as surrogates for demand. Assessing needs in a technically credible, consistent, and
unbiased way is difficult. Federal law requires infrastructure-funding agencies, such as the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Federal Highway Administration, to con-
duct needs assessments (EPA, no date-d; DOT, Federal Highway Administration, 2015), but
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and professional, trade, and lobbying groups, such as ASCE,
also conduct such assessments (O’Keefe, 2015). Agencies and organizations generally employ
their own methods and assumptions and, not surprisingly, reach different conclusions about
what is needed.
Needs assessments rely primarily on “business as usual” projections of maintenance and
rehabilitation of the current stock of infrastructure. But the assumption that business will
remain as usual must be questioned. In the early 20th century, state and federal governments
were unprepared when automobile ownership surged. There simply were not enough roads for
all the cars. In the late 20th century, Rust Belt cities saw some infrastructure fall into disuse
because of economic changes and demographic shifts. Needs assessments must account for
changing business models, technologies, and demographics (for example, car-sharing services,
transportation network companies, self-driving vehicles, and the movement of young people
back into urban areas). The value of extending existing infrastructure versus other alternatives
must be assessed anew for each place. This is difficult, but it is the basis for sound national
needs assessments.
Introduction 7
Insufficient Interagency Coordination and Dysfunctional Regional Governance

Insufficient regional coordination and dysfunctional governance arrangements can stand in
the way of implementing big, multijurisdictional projects. For example, the proposed Gateway
tunnel between New York and New Jersey has stalled, even though it is the very model of an
interstate project for which the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was conceived
(Wachs and Frankel, 2017; Davis, 2017).
Absence of National or Regional Priorities
Unlike China or the European Union, the United States lacks a vision of how infrastructure
can enhance economic growth and productivity, and, in the absence of such a vision, priori-
ties are difficult to articulate. Neither the executive nor legislative branch of the federal gov-
ernment has published lists of infrastructure projects of national significance as they did, for
example, in the mid-20th century for major water resource development and construction of
the Interstate Highway System. When Congress considered major infrastructure spending in
the context of the ARRA stimulus package in 2009, it was not guided by a national priority
list. Rather, projects were pursued piecemeal through separate agency and sectoral programs.
They were funded by different mechanisms and did not compete for capital on their merits.
Funding flowed through the states, with no comprehensive national strategy.
More promising are the most recently passed major pieces of authorizing legislation for
transportation and water infrastructure: the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST)
Act of 2015 (Pub L. 114-94) and the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2016
(Pub L. 114-322, Title I). The FAST Act, the first long-term transportation funding bill enacted
in a decade, provides more than $305 billion in funding for FYs 2015 through 2020 (DOT,
Federal Highway Administration, 2016). The FAST Act largely continues programs that have
been in existence for some time, by funding well-established mechanisms, such as the federal
Highway Trust Fund. Notably, the act boosts investments in freight movement corridors, it
uses better measurements of performance to manage the national transportation system, and it
continues commitments made in earlier acts to the streamlining of environmental reviews and
the enhancement of project delivery. The 2016 WRDA singled out harbor-deepening projects
for “ports of national significance.”
After the 2016 election, the New York Times published an example of what a national pri-
ority list might look like. It included the $24 billion Hudson River rail tunnel, $65 billion for
California’s high-speed rail project, and a $20 billion sea wall for Miami, among other mega-
projects (Stewart, 2016). Selection criteria were not provided.
Resilience to Natural Disasters and a Changing Climate
Rising sea levels and changes in rainfall patterns are already upon us (U.S. Global Change
Research Program, 2014). More than 40 percent of the U.S. population lives in counties along
coasts, and that number is expected to increase (National Ocean Service, no date). Transporta-
tion and water infrastructure in coastal areas are already at risk (U.S. Global Change Research
Program, 2014, Chapter 25: Coasts). The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)
recently estimated federal disaster costs to be at least $277 billion between FYs 2005 and
2014 (GAO, 2016). Further, the dollar value of damage from extreme weather events has qua-
drupled in real terms over the past four decades (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-
istration, National Centers for Environmental Information, no date). These costs are likely to
increase over time unless measures are taken to reduce risk (GAO, 2016). The uncertainty is
not whether these climatic trends will persist but how soon they will threaten the economic
viability of coastal communities unless action is taken. Resilience activities throughout the
United States have expanded significantly over the past decade (Georgetown Climate Center,
no date), and resilience is now an integral feature of planning and design of new infrastructure
and rehabilitation of existing facilities in some places. Simply rebuilding old infrastructure to
its previous design specifications may no longer suffice. Indeed, in many inland locations, for
example, bridges already are being raised to accommodate higher flood levels (McFetridge,
2017).
Some states and cities seek to lower emissions of carbon dioxide and reduce energy use in
buildings, transportation systems, and agriculture.10 While climate policy at the national level
is in flux, efforts to reduce emissions at the state and local levels have been gaining momentum
in recent years and will likely have a significant impact on future demand for and design of
infrastructure. Many regions will, for example, demand more investment in mass transit, new
road systems for autonomous vehicles, and storm surge and flood control works for areas facing
increasing flood risk.
NIMBYism
Meanwhile, some communities reject proposed infrastructure projects—the “not in my back-
yard” (NIMBY) problem. Advocates of “cutting red tape” face opponents who want to stall
projects and citizens who want technically credible environmental review, which takes time.
Attempting to speed things up by circumventing public engagement often leads to delays as
stakeholders seek legal and administrative remedies. At the same time, there are clearly ineffi-
ciencies that could be reduced without circumventing standards or the fundamentals of settled
administrative law, particularly when multiple federal agencies have jurisdiction over the same
project but run separate and disjointed processes of their own. An early example of this model
was implemented in the landmark 1994 Bay Delta accord when four federal agencies, the
State of California, municipal water suppliers, environmental organizations, and agricultural
interests came together on a single regulatory review process to consider major changes in how
water would be allocated in California, affecting the San Francisco Bay and the delta formed
at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers (Rieke, 1996).
Misallocation of Capital
Unintended consequences of policies can lead to a misallocation of capital, whether public or
private.
Bias Toward Capital Spending over Operations and Maintenance
The federal government long ago established policies that favor federal investment in new
infrastructure over spending on O&M. If state and local governments wanted the federal capi-
tal, their taxpayers needed to shoulder lifetime maintenance of whatever was built. This cre-
ated an incentive to “go large” with the initial investment to garner near-term economic and
political benefits but downplay the life-cycle costs of operations, maintenance, and repair. For
example, in 2009, the ARRA funded 259 green infrastructure projects worth more than
$209 million. However, a 2013 EPA report found that only 59 percent of these projects
10 For example, California’s Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008 requires its metropolitan plan-
ning organizations (MPOs) to incorporate carbon emissions reductions in their land use and transportation plans (Institute
for Local Government, 2015).
Introduction 9
had dedicated sources of O&M funding (EPA, Clean Water State Revolving Fund, 2013).
Buses are another example. The federal government pays for 80 percent of many new buses to
replace ones that are more than 12 years old but provides little funding to maintain buses. Not
surprisingly, transit operators do less maintenance than ideal and are quicker to replace buses
at age 12 (DOT, Federal Transit Administration, no date)—a waste of tax dollars.
Short-Term Perspective
Keynesians view investment in infrastructure as an effective countercyclical measure to prime
the demand pump during economic downturns. This was the essence of President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Works Progress Administration (WPA), with its focus on
getting people back to work during the Great Depression.11 Presidents and Congress are often
tempted to rekindle a WPA-like program, but without a thoughtful strategy, a short-term
mindset could jeopardize longer-term nationwide growth and productivity gains. The focus
on “shovel-ready projects” in the ARRA of 2009, for example, diverted attention from projects
with greater long-term returns on public investment (Holtz-Eakin and Wachs, 2011).
Regional Competition and Conflict
Investments that might be good for the nation as a whole, however defined, will inevitably
benefit some regions more than others. Port improvements are one common example of this
phenomenon. Some investments that are top priorities for one region might simply transfer
economic activity from another region with little to no net national benefit (McDonnell and
Kitroeff, 2016). However, investment based solely on a net national economic benefit criterion
would be politically unpalatable, so, in the name of regional equity, federal funding is distrib-
uted among regions and states using allocation formulas and, to some degree, earmarking of
appropriations.
Legal Constraints on Public and Private Capital Flows
The federal tax code allows interest income accruing to holders of municipal bonds to be
exempt from taxation. This lowers the cost of borrowing for cities but sometimes displaces pri-
vate financing. State tax codes prescribe acceptable forms of PPPs, some of which also inhibit
the flow of private capital into infrastructure investment (Bipartisan Policy Center [BPC],
2016). Some states also constrain the ability of local governments to levy property taxes or
to retain sales tax and other tax receipts, thereby reducing their ability to generate sufficient
revenues to maintain existing facilities according to best practices (Oregon Secretary of State,
2017).
Public Expectations of Infrastructure Investment
At its most basic level, investment in infrastructure is desirable to support long-term eco-
nomic development and increase economic efficiency (Glaeser, 2012). Public expectations are
11 Proponents usually add that such spending will have the further salutary effect of creating many new jobs in the con-
struction trades. For example, according to the National Association of Manufacturers, without major improvements to our
transportation systems, “the United States will lose more than 2.5 million jobs by 2025” (National Association of Manu-
facturers, 2016). Near-term job creation through construction of infrastructure projects is politically compelling but, eco-
nomically, a questionable proposition at best. See Copeland, Levine, and Mallett (2011); Encyclopedia Britannica (2013).
broader. Throughout the United States’ history, the federal government also has used invest-
ments in infrastructure to spur regional development and mitigate economic disparities among
regions.12 For example, it is no accident that per capita transportation funding in the ten least
densely populated states is about twice the per capita funding in the ten most densely popu-
lated states.13 Further, in recent decades, the public has grown to expect that infrastructure will
be designed to harmonize with communities, the physical environment, and natural systems.
For example, the Clean Air Act (1963, Pub L. 88-206); the National Environmental Pro-
tection Act of 1969 (1970, Pub L. 91-190); the Clean Air Extension Act (1970, Pub L. 91-604);
the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, commonly known as the Clean Water Act (1972,
Pub L. 92-500); and other laws require that public infrastructure protect and improve air and
water quality and protect and restore critical habitat and ecosystems. As a result of such legis-
lation, the BOR and the USACE have spent the better part of the past 30 years “reverse engi-
neering” their major 20th century water resource projects (e.g., dams on the Colorado River,
the Everglades, and the lower Mississippi River) to mitigate the damages their projects have
caused to natural systems.
Other federal laws, regulations, and executive orders require that federally funded proj-
ects promote and protect public safety, reduce risks, and increase resilience to rising seas and
flood waters. States such as California and New York and many cities and counties are increas-
ingly concerned about adapting to climate change and becoming more resilient to extreme
weather events (Georgetown Climate Center, no date). Through federal executive action (prior
to 2017) and some state laws, federally funded or permitted facilities also were required to
reduce carbon emissions.14
These mandates are a tall order, and achieving them all requires public agencies to look
beyond a simple return on investment. The multiple goals also explain why so many infrastruc-
ture projects cannot attract private capital. The public-sector challenge is to provide enough
investment in infrastructure to meet these noneconomic goals, but not so much that it crowds
out private investment or diverts public capital from more efficient and effective uses.15
Approach to Analysis
Our objectives in this study were to understand why demand for better-maintained infra-
structure and new investment is not being met under current policies, funding, and market
conditions; identify efficient and equitable ways to act on regional and national infrastructure
priorities; suggest strategies that are likely to improve on current practice; and recommend
policy changes, primarily at the federal level, to remedy some of the problems identified. To
accomplish these ends, we drew on existing data and analysis to the extent possible.
12 Examples include the BOR bringing water and agricultural development to the Great American Desert; the Tennessee
Valley Authority bringing cheap electricity and flood control to an impoverished region; the Appalachian Regional Com-
mission; and the USACE bringing inland waterways, flood control, and water supply to the Mississippi and Missouri val-
leys, the Gulf Coast, and much of the southern United States.
13 “Over the last twenty years, transportation funding for the ten most densely populated states has been half as much, on a
per capita basis, as funding for the ten least dense states” (Glaeser, 2012, p. 266, quoting from Glaeser and Gottlieb, 2008).
14 The White House, Executive Order 13514 (Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance),
Executive Order 13693 (Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade).
15 See, for example, consequences of over-investment in infrastructure in China (Kalish, 2016).
Introduction 11
We first identified the features of transportation and water policies and programs that
exert a strong influence on priority setting, project evaluation, and funding and finance. Next,
we examined the supply side for infrastructure. We reviewed government documents and other
credible sources that report on the status and trends in spending for transportation and water
infrastructure in the United States over the past 60 years or so. Spending does not tell us about
the particulars of supply—what was built and when or how well it was built to meet future
needs—but it does provide a measurement of public-sector commitment to both capital invest-
ment and O&M. On the demand side, we examined the value, inconsistencies, and limitations
of needs surveys against the backdrop of urbanization, technological innovations, and other
forces mediating demand for infrastructure services.
We also examined the federal decisionmaking processes that match supply with demand,
however imperfectly estimated. We reviewed scholarly papers, government reports, and policy
studies from policy research organizations with bearing on the federal approach to selecting
and funding transportation and water infrastructure projects. Next, we summarized recent
initiatives being taken by federal, state, and local governments and recommendations that have
been proposed over the years. We then evaluated these in light of the weaknesses identified in
current policies, and we used this evaluation to identify the most promising options for Con-
gress and the Executive Branch.
How This Report Is Organized
In Chapter Two, we present an overview of status and trends in public and private spending for
transportation and water infrastructure from the early 1950s to present. Chapter Three sum-
marizes the different flavors of funding and financing models used by the public and private
sectors to construct and maintain transportation and water infrastructure. Our interest is in
understanding how these models function and the various supply, demand, and misallocation
issues that appear to impede the provision of beneficial and sustainable infrastructure.
In Chapters Four and Five, we look at the policy and program structures of federal trans-
portation and water infrastructure, respectively; review their priority-setting processes, project
selection, and evaluation methods; and consider how these programs square with the broad set
of public goals now in play. We also examine why most assessments of funding needs in these
sectors are unreliable measures of demand for public and private investment. We further con-
sider the difficulties of providing infrastructure in these sectors as a consequence of regulatory
requirements and funding and financial constraints. In sum, these chapters support the argu-
ment that targeted changes in public policy are needed, both to draw in private-sector funding
where possible and to rationalize public-sector investment to meet future needs. In Chapter
Six, we consider some of the more significant recent changes in policy and practices across all
levels of government in the United States. Some of these initiatives are still too early in their
implementation to allow us to draw definitive conclusions about their efficacy, but others show
signs of promise and could be candidates for scale-up. We identify other proposed policy
options that could sharpen demand signals, streamline the supply of projects, and reduce the
prevalence of costly misallocation. We also look at promising practices employed in other
highly developed nations. Finally, in Chapter Seven, we conclude with a synthesis of our find-
ings and recommendations to policymakers.
CHAPTER TWO
Status of and Trends in Spending on Transportation and Water

Infrastructure
Given the prominence of the underspending argument in the national debate, this chapter
focuses on the transportation and water sectors, where government has historically played the
dominant role. We use definitions consistent with those applied by the Congressional Budget
Office (CBO, 2015). Water infrastructure includes both resources and utilities:
• Resources: water containment systems (dams, levees, reservoirs, and watersheds); sources
of freshwater (lakes and rivers); and rivers, canals, and harbors, which are typically
improved and maintained by the USACE
• Utilities: water supply and wastewater treatment facilities.
Transportation infrastructure includes
• highways, bridges, and tunnels

• mass transit
• rail
• airports and aviation facilities
• water transportation (such as ferries, inland waterways, and coastal ports).
For purposes of this study, for transportation infrastructure, we focus primarily on high-
ways and mass transit, which account for about 80 percent of total public expenditures on
transportation (CBO, 2015).
Some projects within these categories are in private hands or operated by private compa-
nies on behalf of the public, but they nonetheless represent the sectors in which federal, state,
and local governments remain most deeply involved in governance, project selection, funding,
and maintenance. In contrast, energy, telecommunications, and many port facilities are critical
infrastructure that are largely in private hands and, as such, controlled by market forces, albeit
under regulatory oversight.
Color of Money
We distinguish between capital and O&M spending because they are treated differently in
public programs, bond markets, and by investors and the public. Drawing on CBO’s defini-
tions, capital refers to outlays for the purchase of new structures such as highways, dams, and
wastewater treatment facilities; equipment, such as buses and railcars; and improvement and
13
rehabilitation of structures and equipment already in place. Operation and maintenance refers
to the costs of providing necessary operating services (e.g., air traffic control system); main-
taining and repairing existing capital; and other infrastructure-related programs (e.g., highway
safety programs, research and development [R&D]). The latter category is significant in trans-
portation, where lessening loss of life, injury, and damage to property are among the principal
motivations for investment. Historically, the federal government has participated directly in
R&D, as well as funding research at universities and other institutions, because new transpor-
tation technology, databases, and regulations operate across all states and affect private com-
panies nationwide.
We have chosen to conform to CBO’s definitions to enable us to take advantage of its
relatively recent compilation of public spending. However, from a policy perspective, unlike
CBO, we believe that R&D should be treated as a separate category. Spending on R&D is
fundamentally different in economic terms than capital or O&M spending on specific infra-
structure in specific places. Historically, federal and state support for R&D has been a vitally
important contributor to innovations and improvements in technology, policy, and practice in
transportation and water infrastructure.1 Its benefits are broadly shared among the states, and
its effects long-lasting.
The distinction between capital and O&M has implications for planning, cost estima-
tion, budgeting, financing, and tax policy. Figure 2.1 shows where different kinds of deci-
sionmaking and spending occur in the life cycle of an individual project. Decision point #1
represents the process of either a public- or private-sector entity making a choice to invest in a
particular infrastructure project. Historically, the federal government has focused its decision-
making at this stage in the realms of transportation and water through omnibus authorization
bills. Subsequent to the initial investment, construction, and initiation of the project, funding
is required to sustain the project’s operations through routine maintenance.
At decision point #2, policymakers can opt to extend the life of an existing project or
facility, rebuild it completely,2 or effectively decommission it by withholding additional capi-
tal for repairs or modernization. Recent examples of removal include San Francisco’s Embar-
cadero Freeway (Preservation Institute, 2007c), Portland’s Harbor Drive Freeway (Preserva-
tion Institute, 2007b), and Milwaukee’s Park East Freeway (Preservation Institute, 2007a).
Or policymakers may simply put off the decision for another year—or decade—because the
other options are too contentious or expensive. However, delay has consequences, leading to
either increasing costs for repair and rehabilitation or an increasing likelihood that the project
will become unusable. Decisions at this stage are further complicated by the need to consider
1 Federal support for water resource research has largely been through the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Research
Program, the National Science Foundation, state-based Water Resources Research Institutes, the USACE’s Institute for
Water Resources, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, and other federal agencies (Vaux, 2005;
National Research Council, Committee on Assessment of Water Resources Research, 2004).
The majority of transportation-related research is funded by “modal administrations” within DOT, which also directly
operates some research facilities, such as the Turner Fairbank Laboratory in Virginia and the Volpe Center in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. DOT also funds a large program of university transportation centers. Other R&D funding, primarily from
the states, comes through the Transportation Research Board within the nongovernmental National Research Council.
States receive federal funding for research and then “pool” that funding through action by the Standing Committee on
Research of the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO), which directs it to the Trans-
portation Research Board.
2 As an example, New York State chose to completely rebuild the Tappan Zee Bridge, now called the New NY Bridge,
across the Hudson River (New York State Thruway Authority, no date).
Status of and Trends in Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure 15
Figure 2.1
Project Life Cycle
Decision Capital investment in new

point #1 project
Sustainment of project operations

through routine maintenance
Extend life Decision

of project point #2
End life
of project
Major repair Rehab Delay Project

becomes Dismantle
unusable
Modernization
RAND RR1739-2.1
a broader set of public goals related to equity, resilience, and climate change. The numerous
contingencies and options at this decision point go a long way to explaining why infrastructure
needs assessments, discussed in later chapters, are so problematic.
Decisions about project selection are made in the context of available funding and financ-
ing alternatives from public and private sources. Figure 2.2 shows that within these broad
Figure 2.2
Infrastructure Funding by Public and Private Sectors
Clearly defined
user base with All Private
willingness to pay;
attractive return on
investment; public PPP
benefits
Economic
development Local public
opportunity agency
Diffuse public benefits;

unattractive or Combination
inappropriate for local, state,
private investment and federal
NOTE: PPP = public-private partnership.

RAND RR1739-2.2
categories are many different types and blends of funding options. On the public side, the
primary funder can be federal, state, or local government. It can also be some combination of
those three or a regional authority that spans jurisdictions, such as the Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey. Project funding can come through public borrowing, primarily tax-
exempt municipal revenue bonds, user fees, or from appropriations of general tax funds gener-
ated from sales, property, or income tax receipts. Private funding and financing can come from
any number of sources, including banks, investment funds, and other pooled capital. Whether
funding or financing comes from public or private sources, the investor needs a return on capi-
tal, typically in the form of a revenue stream. Whether tolls are “acceptable” in a political or
institutional context may end up determining whether a given facility is deemed appropriate
for private investment rather than the intrinsic attributes of the facility itself. Chapter Three
discusses funding and financing in more detail.
Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure: 2014
In 2014, federal, state, and local governments spent a total of $416 billion on capital and
O&M for both transportation and water infrastructure. As shown in Figure 2.3, transporta-
tion accounts for about 60 percent of this total, with spending on highways accounting for the
largest portion. Given the large role of the private sector in rail transportation, it is not surpris-
ing that this is a very small component of direct public spending.
The split in spending between the federal government and state and local governments,
shown in Figure 2.4, varies widely across the different infrastructure types. State and local
governments account for 96 percent of spending on water utilities and more than 70 percent of
spending on highways, mass transit, and rail. In contrast, the federal share is notably larger in
Figure 2.3
Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, 2014
Rail ($3 billion)
Highways Mass transit Aviation

Transportation ($165 billion) ($65 billion) ($36 billion)
Water
Water resourcesa
transportation
($28 billion)
($10 billion)
Water utilitiesb
Water ($109 billion)
0 50 100 150 200 250 300

Billions of dollars
SOURCE: CBO, 2015, Exhibit 1, p. 8, based on data from OMB and the U.S. Census Bureau.
a
b
RAND RR1739-2.3
Figure 2.4
Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, by Type, 2014
Highways 28% 72%
Water utilitiesa 4% 96%
Mass transit
23% 77%
and rail
Aviation 44% 56%
Water resourcesb 35% 65%
43% Federal
Water
57% State and local governments
transportation
0 50 100 150 200

Billions of dollars
a
b
RAND RR1739-2.4
aviation, water resources, and water transportation. A 2015 study by the Pew Charitable Trusts
provides further details about the funding shares among the different levels of government, as
shown in Figure 2.5. Intergovernmental funding flows from the federal to state level, as well as
from the state to local level, contribute a portion of the total funds spent on transportation, but
the majority of total money spent comes from local governments’ own-source funding.
The proportion of spending by level of government on capital versus O&M varies con-
siderably, as shown in Figure 2.6. The federal government was responsible for almost 40 per-
cent of capital spending on transportation and water infrastructure in 2014, in contrast to its
12 percent share of O&M. Viewed another way in Figure 2.7, the federal government’s domi-
nant support is for capital expenditures, while state and local governments spend most of their
money on O&M.
The emphasis on capital spending by the federal government is not an accident. Many
members of Congress view federal funding for O&M as “free money” that translates into
higher wages and fringe benefits for workers in those areas. They further assume that state and
local governments will spend more wisely on capital projects because they know they will be
responsible for O&M in the future. This arrangement was explicit in the Federal-Aid Highway
Act of 1956, which specified that the federal government would not contribute to operations
once the system was built.
Figure 2.5
Surface Transportation Funding Flows Among Levels of Government, 2012
Federal
$58 billion government $2 billion
$45 billion
$11 billion
Own-source revenue
State Transportation
$89 billion $109 billion
government system
$26 billion
Local
$73 billion government $109 billion
Own-source flows Intergovernmental transfers Direct spending on transportation
SOURCES: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2015, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2014) and OMB’s Public
Budget Database. Used with permission.
RAND RR1739-2.5
Figure 2.6
Shares of Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, by Category, 2014
Capital Operation and maintenance

($181 billion) ($235 billion)
Federal
government:
$27 billion
(12%)
Federal
government:
$69 billion
(38%)
State and Local
governments: State and local
$112 billion governments:
(62%) $208 billion
(88%)
RAND RR1739-2.6
Figure 2.7
Shares of Public Spending for Capital and the Operation and Maintenance on Transportation
and Water Infrastructure, by Level of Government, 2014
Federal government State and local governments

($96 billion) ($320 Billion)
Operation and
maintenance:
$27 billion
Capital:
(29%)
$112 billion
(35%)
Capital: Operation and

$69 billion maintenance:
(71%) $208 billion
(65%)
RAND RR1739-2.7
Trends in Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure
CBO assembled a consistent data set on public infrastructure spending dating back to 1956,
when the Federal-Aid Highway Act was enacted (CBO, 2015). We focus on public spending
by all levels of government for transportation and water infrastructure only. All amounts have
been converted to their equivalent in 2014 dollars. The trends in Figure 2.8 are clear: Capital
spending—which is primarily federal spending—has been on the decline since around 2002,
with the exception of the bump between 2009 and 2010 from the ARRA stimulus package fol-
lowing the 2008 financial crisis. Other noticeable dips in capital spending occurred around the
recession in the mid-1970s and significant budget cutting during President Ronald Reagan’s
first term in office. In contrast, spending on O&M has been on the rise, and that is mostly
local and state spending. What is not known is how much steeper the slope of the O&M
spending line should be, commensurate with the increase in capital stock that occurred during
the second half of the 20th century.
When total public spending on transportation and water infrastructure is viewed as a
share of GDP, as shown in Figure 2.9, the trend has been relatively stable over the past 60
years. However, when viewed by infrastructure type, as in Figure 2.10, the decline in spending
on highways is significant, while spending on other infrastructure types has been relatively flat
for decades, including for mass transit. U.S. transit use is generally higher now than any time
since 1956, outpacing population growth, although trips dipped slightly in the first quarter of
2017 (American Public Transit Association, 2017b; Schmitt, 2017).
Figure 2.8
Total Federal, State, and Local Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, 1956–2014
500
Total federal, state, and local spending
Infrastructure spending (billions of 2014 dollars)
450
Capital spending
Operation and maintenance spending
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
1956
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1968
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
Year
SOURCE: Data from CBO, 2015.
RAND RR1739-2.8
Figure 2.9
Total Federal, State, and Local Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, as a Share of
Gross Domestic Product, 1956–2014
3.5
3.0
2.5
Percentage of GDP
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0
1956 1961 1966 1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2011
Year
Economic Analysis.
RAND RR1739-2.9
Figure 2.10
Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure as a Share of Gross Domestic Product,
by Type of Infrastructure, 1956–2014
Highways Mass transit and rail

2.0 2.0
1.5 1.5
1.0 1.0
0.5 0.5
Percentage of GDP
0 0
Water resourcesa Water utilitiesb
2.0 2.0
1.5 1.5
1.0 1.0
0.5 0.5
0 0
1956 1964 1972 1980 1988 1996 2004 2012 1956 1964 1972 1980 1988 1996 2004 2012
Year
Economic Analysis.
a
b
RAND RR1739-2.10
The trend in total public spending per capita in Figure 2.11 shows a downward turn
beginning around 2003–2004, well before the 2008 recession, but federal per capita spending
has remained relatively flat since 1980.
As shown in Figure 2.12, federal spending patterns have changed little in six decades,
even while the U.S. economy and population nearly doubled. The exceptions are the bump
provided by the federal highway program in the late 1950s followed by federal (EPA) assis-
tance for waste water treatment plant construction through the Clean Water Act’s construction
grants program in the late 1970s and early 1980s. From 1956 to 2014, the U.S. economy grew
by 156 percent, from $6.4 trillion in 1980 to $16.4 trillion in 2015 (expressed in 2009 dollars;
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, no date), and the population
increased by 88 percent from 169 million to 318 million people (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017).
In contrast, Figure 2.13 shows that state and local governments increased their capital spend-
ing up until the early 2000s but have been mostly decreasing their expenditures since then.
They have steadily increased their O&M spending over this period, but, as with Figure 2.8,
we cannot say whether the slope of the O&M spending line is keeping up with actual O&M
needs or whether it ought to be much steeper, given the increase in capital stock over this
period.
State and local government capital spending since the early 2000s reflects the cycle of
growth, recession, and recovery, as seen in Figure 2.14 in the trends in issuance of municipal
bonds (U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Economic Policy, 2014), the primary means
by which local governments finance infrastructure. Bond issues dropped by more than 30 per-
Figure 2.11
Per Capita Federal, State, and Local Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure,
1956–2014
1,800
Federal
1,600
State and local
1,400 Total
1,200
2014 dollars
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
1956
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1968
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
SOURCE: Milsap, 2016, using data from CBO (2015) and the U.S. Census Bureau. Used with permission.
RAND RR1739-2.11
Figure 2.12
Total Federal Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, 1956–2014
500
Total federal spending
450
Capital spending
Federal spending (billions of 2014 dollars)

400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
1956
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1968
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
Years
RAND RR1739-2.12
Figure 2.13
Total State and Local Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, 1956–2014
500,000
Total state and local infrastructure spending
Infrastructure spending (billions of 2014 dollars)
450
Capital spending
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
1956
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1968
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
Year
RAND RR1739-2.13
Figure 2.14
Municipal Bond Issuance in USD Billions, 1996–2016
500
450
400
350
Billions of dollars
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016
SOURCES: Data from Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, 2017a.
RAND RR1739-2.14
cent after 2010 but bounced back to record highs in 2016, twice as high as in 1996 (in current
dollars; Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, 2007a). Uncertainty regarding
congressional action on infrastructure spending and tax policy has driven bond issues down in
2017 to date. Interest on these bonds is exempt from federal taxes, making them attractive and
competitive to investors who qualify for the tax breaks.
Trends in Public Spending on Highways and Mass Transit
Nearly all federal spending on highways between 1956 and 2014 was in the form of capital
expenditures, as shown in Figure 2.15.3 Spending on new highway construction soared follow-
ing the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, declined from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, and
peaked at nearly $60 billion in 2002–2003. Total federal capital spending in 2014 was around
$45 billion. We cannot say definitively whether this decline in capital spending represents true
disinvestment or underinvestment in highways, but the academic literature suggests that the
decline is consistent with the “built out” nature of our national highway system (Shatz et al.,
2011; Mamuneas and Nadiri, 2006). Support for this view can be found in returns on invest-
Figure 2.15
Total Federal Spending on Highways, 1956–2014
70
Total federal highway spending
Capital spending
60
O&M spending
50
40
30
20
10
0
1956
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1968
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
Year
RAND RR1739-2.15
3 Because of its land management responsibilities in national parks, national forests, and other public lands, the federal
government spends directly on operations and maintenance. It also transfers some money to states for O&M. No federal
transit funds are for O&M.
ment in highways, which fell from 35 percent in the 1950s to 10 percent in the 1980s and even
less now (Popper and Gates, 2016).
However, while it is true that the national highway system is “built out,” it is also the
case that some roads are more than 70 years old. Many are functionally obsolete, and some are
both obsolete and in poor condition. In its 2016 report on the conditions and performance of
highways, bridges, and transit, DOT estimated that the share of travel on federal-aid highway
pavement rated as poor in quality was 16.7 percent in 2015, up from 14.7 percent in 2002
(DOT, Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration, 2016). Capital
investment needs do not end when a system is completed, and, indeed, some elements of the
surface road network need to be “recapitalized” beyond routine O&M (Poole, 2013). This
could include, for example, a targeted set of highway capacity expansion projects where conges-
tion is highest (Shatz et al., 2011).
Trends in vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) and VMT per person, shown in Figure 2.16, lev-
eled off for about a ten-year stretch and then increased again over the past five years, correlated
strongly with falling gasoline prices. From 1936, VMT and GDP grew in lockstep, except
during World War II.4
Figure 2.16
Trends in Vehicle-Miles Traveled
250
Vehicle-miles traveled by freight

200
Vehicle-miles traveled
Index (1980 = 100)
150
Vehicle-miles traveled
per persona
Lane-miles
100
50
0
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Year
SOURCE: CBO, 2016, Figure 1-4, p. 10, based on data from the Federal Highway Administration, the Bureau of
Transportation Statistics, and the U.S. Census Bureau.
NOTE: Because of a change in the Federal Highway Administration's methodology, data for freight vehicle-miles
traveled after 2008 are not comparable with the information from earlier periods, so they are not separately
reported in this figure. Data for vehicle-miles traveled and vehicle-miles traveled per person include both
passenger and freight vehicles.
a
The amounts show are based on the population residing in the United States.
RAND RR1739-2.16
4 DOT Traffic Volume Trends reports (DOT, Federal Highway Administration, Office of Policy and Governmental
Affairs, multiple years); DOT, Office of Public Affairs, 2017; Ecola and Wachs, 2012, Figure 1 and preceding discussion.
Figure 2.17
Growth in Capital Funding for Mass Transit by Source, 2000–2014
9,000
Federal assistance
8,000 State assistance
Local plus directly generated assistance
7,000
6,000
Millions of dollars
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year
SOURCE: American Public Transit Association, 2017a, Figure 12, p. 30. Used with permission.
RAND RR1739-2.17
Figure 2.18
Growth in O&M Funding for Mass Transit by Source, 2000–2014
20,000
Passenger fares and other earnings
Local plus directly generated assistance
State assistance
15,000 Federal assistance
Millions of dollars
10,000
5,000
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year
SOURCE: American Public Transit Association, 2017a, Figure 13, p. 30. Used with permission.
RAND RR1739-2.18
Capital and O&M spending on mass transit have increased since 2000, as show in Fig-
ures 2.17 and 2.18, as ridership generally continues to grow (American Public Transit Associa-
tion, 2017a). The federal share of capital funding grew by more than 66 percent from 2000
to 2014, and states’ share doubled. All levels of government have been increasing their spend-
ing on O&M. Having said this, a number of the nation’s largest transit agencies, notably the
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and the New York City Transit Authority,
are struggling to maintain their aging systems. While each system has its own form of dysfunc-
tion, they share issues in governance, management priorities, and sustainable revenue models
(Kalikow, 2017; Esteban and Muyskens, 2017).5 However indispensable these mass transit sys-
tems may be, their fares cover, on average, only about 35 percent of operating expenses (Min,
2017).
Trends in Public Spending on Water Utilities
We distinguish spending on water resource infrastructure (e.g., dams, reservoirs, waterways)

from water utilities that deliver drinking water and wastewater services. As shown in the
bottom left panel of Figure 2.10, spending on water resources as a share of GDP has remained
unchanged for the past 50 years, after peaking in the 1950s and 1960s. However, many of the
old systems are reaching the end of their engineered lifetimes and will need significant main-
tenance and modernization (National Research Council, Committee on U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers Water Resources Science, Engineering, and Planning, 2011).
Federal spending on water utilities, shown in the top panel of Figure 2.19, peaked in the
mid-to-late 1970s, when it required local governments to build more advanced wastewater
treatment plants to reduce pollution into the nation’s waterways in compliance with the Clean
Water Act. State and local capital spending on water utilities dipped after the 2008 financial
crisis, as shown in the bottom panel of Figure 2.19.
Trends in Private-Sector Spending on Transportation and Water

Infrastructure
Private investment in transportation and water infrastructure is relatively minor (Engel,
Fischer, and Galetovic, 2011). Table 2.1 shows that in 2014, private investment made up only
about 3 percent of total expenditures on transportation and water, with most of the private
funding dedicated to rail (Gayer, Drukker, and Gold, 2016). These numbers show how unat-
tractive transportation and water projects have been to domestic and foreign investors, in part
due to government policies. In the UK, private investors poured $50 billion into transportation
infrastructure over the past 15 years, compared with only $10 billion in the United States over
the same period (Engel, Fischer, and Galetovic, 2011).
Even so, interest in private spending through PPPs is growing. PPPs are attractive to
public entities because they are able to receive a large portion of the financial investment up
5 Kalikow chaired New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority from 2001 to 2007; his op-ed in the New York
Times is titled “The M.T.A. Has Enough Money.”
Figure 2.19
Federal Spending (top) Versus State and Local Spending (bottom) on Water Infrastructure
140
Total federal water utilities spending
120 Capital spending
100
80
60
40
20
0
1956
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1968
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
Infrastructure spending, loans, and subsidies (billions of 2014 dollars)
Year
140
State and local water utilities spending, loans, and subsidies
120 Capital spending
100
80
60
40
20
0
1956
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1968
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
Year
RAND RR1739-2.19
Table 2.1
Total Expenditures on Transportation and Water Infrastructure, 2014 (in billions of 2014 dollars)
Public
Federal
Grants
Direct and Loan Total State/ Total
Expenditure Subsidies Federal Local Public Private Total
Highways 1.5 44.9 46.4 118.3 164.7 0.0 164.7
Rail 0.3 2.7 3.0 N/A 3.0 9.7 12.7
Mass transit 0.2 12.3 12.5 52.9 65.4 0.2 65.6
Aviation 12.9 3.2 16.1 20.0 36.1 1.0 37.1
Water 4.2 0.1 4.3 5.6 9.9 0.3 10.2

transportation
Water resources 9.8 0.1 9.9 18.3 28.2 0.0 28.2
Water utilities 0.0 4.4 4.4 104.5 108.9 0.8a 109.7
Total 28.9 67.7 96.6 319.6 416.2 12.0 428.2
SOURCE: Gayer, Drukker, and Gold, 2016; data on public investment from CBO, 2015; data on private investment
from U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2015, Table 5.7S: Investment in Private
Structures by Industry.
NOTE: Total expenditures include capital investment and O&M costs.
a Includes waste management and remediation services.
front and transfer some development risk, and PPPs are attractive to private funders who seek
stable, long-term returns on investments (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2016).
Figure 2.20 shows the trend for PPP transportation investment between 1988 and 2009.
Each X marks a specific combined public and private investment, and the dashed line rep-
resents a regression model of the trend in the data. The trend appears to show that invest-
ment is rising and may eventually become more significant in the future, especially as states
adopt more laws allowing PPP transactions (Engel, Fischer, and Galetovic, 2011). However,
the amounts are below 1 percent of total public spending on transportation. PPPs are further
defined and discussed in Chapter Three.
Findings
The federal government’s transportation and water infrastructure spending is predominantly

on capital, while state and local governments shoulder the burden of both capital and O&M
spending. Trends show a marked decline in total capital spending for both transportation
and water infrastructure, mostly since the 2008 economic downturn, but an increase in total
O&M spending. However, these trends alone cannot be unambiguously interpreted as ade-
quate or inadequate. Looking at spending as a share of GDP across infrastructure types, a
decline is most pronounced for highways. For all transportation modes, capital spending has
been trending upward since the 1950s. O&M also has steadily increased, but the adequacy of
the increase likely varies from place to place (CBO, 2015).
Figure 2.20
Public-Private Partnership Investment in the U.S. Transportation Sector
4.0
3.5
PPP investment in billions of dollars
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Year of financial closure
SOURCE: Engel, Fischer, and Galetovic, 2011, based on data from Public Works Financing and other sources. Used
with permission.
RAND RR1739-2.20
Spending on water resource infrastructure peaked in the 1950s and 1960s but has since
held steady. Still, many of those facilities are coming to the end of their expected lifetimes.
Even though Congress ended its grant program to states for wastewater treatment plants more
than 20 years ago, many state and local governments continue to rely on periodic infusions of
capital from the federal government into state revolving loan funds. A similar revolving fund
program was established to help local governments pay for drinking water treatment infra-
structure. The decline in federal funding for water and wastewater treatment infrastructure
reflects congressional decisions to scale back involvement.
Taken as a whole, evidence of federal underspending on infrastructure from a national
perspective appears to be strongest for highways, which have generally been a state and local
responsibility. As federal capital spending declined in recent years, state and local governments
picked up most of the slack. Local investment in water utility infrastructure was set back by
the 2008 recession, as shown by the steep decline in issuance of municipal bonds from 2010 to
2011, but bond issuances bounced back to record levels by 2016. Many water utility systems
appear to be keeping up with their O&M needs, but many others are not, as discussed further
in Chapter Five. In sum, public spending on infrastructure varies across type and place. The
evidence on public spending does not support a broad claim of national disinvestment. Private
funding of transportation and water infrastructure is less than 1 percent of total funding.
CHAPTER THREE
Infrastructure Funding and Finance Mechanisms Currently in Use

in the United States
In this chapter, we compare current U.S. practices for funding and financing transportation
and water infrastructure. Rarely are these two major sectors viewed through the same lens, even
though they constitute the largest draw on public infrastructure funding and share common
characteristics from an investment perspective. We are interested in illuminating the incentives
and disincentives presented by these various arrangements, and their influence on levels and
types of investments.
We discuss these mechanisms within four broad categories of funding and financing
sources: federal; state, local, and tribal governments; banks, investment funds, and pension
funds; and other nongovernmental sources. We distinguish between funding—money received
from a source without expectation of payback—and financing—money received from a lender
with the expectation of payback, usually with interest or other benefits, such as ownership or
development rights.
Who Ultimately Pays for Infrastructure?
Regardless of whether an infrastructure project is funded or financed, the same two sources
ultimately pay for it: users and taxpayers. Lenders and investors may provide financing, but
ultimately users and/or taxpayers repay them. In the simplest terms, funding and finance
mechanisms differ by how, when, under what conditions, and to whom these users or taxpayers
pay for infrastructure. Taxpayers may sometimes also be direct beneficiaries of an infrastruc-
ture project, but not always. Depending on the funding and financing mechanism used, ben-
eficiaries may also include bondholders, shareholders, and various individual and institutional
investors, including public pension funds.
Users
Users of roads, bridges, water supply, and most other infrastructure are accustomed to paying
tolls, water bills, train or bus tickets, and other types of fees.1 User fees are a desirable form
of cost recovery from infrastructure investment when beneficiaries can be clearly identified,
their usage can be unambiguously measured, and the administrative and transaction costs of
collecting fees are a small proportion of revenue flows expected. Heavily traveled roads, for
example, can be financed by monetizing the expected future revenue stream from tolls. User
1 For example, see the International Toll, Bridge, and Turnpike Association (2015).
31
fees can boost efficiency by varying the price by time, location, or type of user. But user fees
are not always appropriate when widespread usage is socially desirable and benefits are spread
broadly across a community.
Taxpayers
Funding for capital or O&M may come from general tax revenues or from a set-aside pool
of money funded by a specific tax for a dedicated purpose. State and local governments also
borrow money in bond markets, with the debt paid back by future taxpayers or future user
fees. Historically, either or both of two conditions have generally been used to justify tax-
payer-funded infrastructure: (1) a project generates large and diffuse net benefits for the local,
regional, or national economy, and/or (2) collection of fees or tolls from individual beneficiaries
is impractical or costly. However, collecting from users is now much easier, as Global Position-
ing System (GPS) trackers allow local jurisdictions to collect fees within their boundaries,
although such pricing still faces obstacles, including concerns about privacy and data security.
Lenders and Other Private Sources

Bankers, private investors, pension funds, and a host of other groups all could invest in infra-
structure outside of the municipal bond market, but they rarely do. Other financing arrange-
ments include bonds, loans, rights to charge user fees, purchase of ownership, and development
rights. For example, a developer may be willing to help pay for infrastructure in exchange for
exclusive rights to build homes or businesses nearby, because land and buildings will sell at a
higher price if the nearby infrastructure is built. Depending on negotiated terms, lenders or
investors may bear some risk of loss if future revenue falls short of expectations, with more risk
commensurate with higher potential returns on investment.
Federal Models for Funding
The federal government has many ways to spend money. Congress appropriates funds directly
to agencies that then disburse those funds themselves, through state and local governments,
or through contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements. As an alternative to collecting and
redistributing tax revenue toward a particular purpose, Congress has modified the federal
tax code to allow individuals and businesses to take tax credits and deductions for designated
expenditures, and thus lower their tax liabilities—for example, by investing in solar or wind
energy.2 For this reason, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) deems
tax credits and tax deductions to be equivalent to expenditures. In addition to appropriations
and tax expenditures, there is also a spectrum of loans and loan guarantees backed by the full
faith and credit of the federal government. These too can sometimes be considered tax expen-
ditures under congressional budget rules.
In this section, we provide a brief overview of these various federal mechanisms for allo-
cating funds toward infrastructure, focusing on their relevance to spending on transportation
and water infrastructure.
2 Established originally in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and later extended several times by Congress, most recently in
December 2016 (U.S. Department of Energy, no date).
Infrastructure Funding and Finance Mechanisms Currently in Use in the United States 33
Direct Investment Through Authorization and Appropriation

Authorization and appropriation is a two-step process used by Congress to allocate money.
In the first step, most committees in the House and Senate are responsible for legislation that
“may create or continue an agency, program, or activity as well as authorize the subsequent
enactment of appropriations” (Heniff, 2012). Authorizations typically extend over multiple
years. Table 3.1 summarizes the primary authorizing committees in Congress responsible for
federal transportation and water resource infrastructure programs.
In the second step of the legislative process, Congress is supposed to enact annual appro-
priations bills to fund authorized agencies, programs, and activities. House and Senate rules
are designed to enforce the distinction between authorizations and appropriations so that, in
most cases, funds cannot be appropriated to an agency, program, or activity that has not been
authorized (Heniff, 2012). The House and Senate each have an Appropriations Committee,
Table 3.1
Congressional Authorization Committees Responsible for Major Federal Transportation and Water
Infrastructure Programs
Water
Committee Transportation Agencies/Programs Agencies/Programs
House Transportation and Federal Highway Administration U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Infrastructure Committee Federal Transit Administration National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Federal Aviation Administration Administration
Federal Rail Administration
House Committee on Natural U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

Resources National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
House Committee on Energy U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

and Commerce
House Committee on Science, National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Space, and Technology Administration
House Financial Services Community Development Block Grants

Committee (Housing and Urban Development
Department)
House Agriculture Committee Natural Resources Conservation Service

and Rural Utilities Service
Senate Committee on Federal Highway Administration U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Environment and Public U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Works National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (partial)
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Senate Energy and Natural U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

Resources Committee
Senate Commerce Federal Aviation Administration National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Committee, Science, and Federal Rail Administration Administration (partial)
Transportation
Senate Banking, Housing, Federal Transit Administration Community Development Block Grants
and Urban Affairs (Housing and Urban Development
Department)
Senate Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service

Committee and Rural Utilities Service
and each committee has 12 subcommittees that cover the entire federal budget, with infra-
structure programs spread across most of them. In recent years, separate annual appropriations
bills have proved difficult to pass, and Congress has resorted to omnibus spending bills and
continuing resolutions.
Other committees of the House and Senate also play important roles related to infra-
structure. The House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee con-
trol tax policy and all of the decisions about tax rates on income and capital gains, as well as
exemptions, credits, and deductions that shape investor behavior with respect to infrastructure
investments. A large part of transportation expenditures is not appropriated; instead, alloca-
tions from the Highway Trust Fund, kept separate from general tax revenues, are spent using
what is called “contract authority” (DOT, Federal Highway Administration, Office of Policy
and Governmental Affairs, 2017). There are many more details underlying congressional juris-
diction, but, for our purposes, the point is that legislative responsibility is widely dispersed,
making policy development across the many committees difficult to coordinate. Within the
Executive Branch, OMB plays a critical coordinating role.
Formula Grants
Formula grants are allocations to states or their subdivisions in accordance with distribution
formulas prescribed by law or administrative regulation for activities not confined to a specific
project. Examples are the annual distributions from the Highway Trust Fund by DOT to
states and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Develop-
ment Block Grant (CDBG) Program to all 50 states and more than 1,200 local governments,
some of which is used to fund transportation and water infrastructure. These programs defer
to state and local governments to determine how funds are to be spent. Federal departments
and agencies have little or no authority to ensure that funds are directed to the projects that
best advance national objectives.
State Revolving Funds

Many states have established State Infrastructure Banks (SIBs) to facilitate state and local
financing of highway and transit projects through direct loans and other credit programs.
SIBs are typically capitalized with federal-aid surface transportation funds, matched with state
funding on an 80/20 basis (DOT, Federal Highway Administration, Office of Innovative Pro-
gram Delivery, no date-a). Federal support for SIBs has been limited to two pilot programs.
A similar mechanism is used for water infrastructure. The two largest funding mecha-
nisms for local water and wastewater utilities are state revolving loan funds established through
federal legislation. The 1987 amendments to the Clean Water Act (33 U.S.C. 1383) established
the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF), which addresses needs for wastewater and
storm water management. The 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act (Pub L. 93-523) authorized the
Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF). Federal grants programs preceded both
revolving loan funds. Revolving funds involve both federal- and state-level funding.
Each state provides funding to match a portion of a federal grant, and the combined
amount capitalizes what effectively is an infrastructure bank for that state. The infrastructure
bank makes low-interest loans to eligible projects within that state. Loan repayment replenishes
its capital so the infrastructure bank can make low-interest loans to new projects. Although
states largely determine which projects get funded, the ARRA required a minimum portion
of the funds in the CWSRF to be loaned to green infrastructure, water or energy efficiency
improvements, or other environmentally innovative investments (EPA, Office of Inspec-

tor General, 2010). The Clean Water Act provides sufficient authority (aside from the special
and limited terms of the ARRA) to enable loan guarantees, as opposed to direct loans, from
CWSRF to be used for watershed protection, efficiency, and green infrastructure projects in
addition to financing publicly owned wastewater treatment plants. States such as New York
and Iowa have been making creative use of these authorities (Curley, 2016).3
The federal government pumps additional funding into the state revolving funds (SRFs)
each year, although year-to-year spending has been uneven, as shown in Figure 3.1 (Gies,
2012). States review and rank proposed projects according to their own priorities and within
11 categories of projects eligible for assistance (EPA, no date-b). Unevenness in capitalization
across states occurs in part because states also have authority to determine the specific terms
of the loans, including when to forgive loans or offer other subsidies. If the funds become
depleted, new revenue needs to be injected into the SRF to stay in business.
A 2015 GAO report examined the factors affecting the ability of states to sustain the
CWSRF and DWSRF programs (GAO, 2015). It found that demands for loans can vary by
Figure 3.1
Federal Spending on State Revolving Funds and Other Appropriations for Water Infrastructure
Grants
6,000
CWSRF grants less ARRA
CWSRF grants
5,000 DWSRF less ARRA & Sandy
DWSRF
Additional appropriations
Millions of 2014 dollars
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
Year
SOURCES: CWSRF and DWSRF data are from EPA (2016) and EPA (2017). Data on additional spending on water
infrastructure via appropriations, covering 1989–2014, are from Copeland (2014a) and Tiemann (2017).
NOTE: Hurricane Sandy struck New Jersey, New York, and other places along the northeast on October 29, 2012,
leading Congress to enact a $50 billion aid bill in 2013 for infrastructure repair and other purposes.
RAND RR1739-3.1
3 As an example, New York State’s SRF guaranteed loans of another state agency to support green energy projects that
would reduce nitrogen emissions from other electricity generating facilities. Airborne nitrogen is a major contributor of pol-
lution of water bodies and eligible within CWSRF’s guidelines.
state depending on economic conditions; environmental factors; availability of other, more

favorable loan programs; administrative requirements; and the bond market. When communi-
ties are unable to repay their loans from the state SRF, the overall balance in the SRF declines,
and less funding is available to loan out for new projects without an infusion of federal assis-
tance. The requirement to charge below-market interest rates and limit interest revenue from
investments also reduces the amount that can be recouped by the SRFs when projects are
undertaken. However, even with continued strong demand, some SRFs continue to carry
unobligated balances for extended periods, allowing valuable federal dollars to go unused.
This problem could possibly be remedied by improving cash flow management and increasing
financial transparency (GAO, 2015, pp. 35–36).
Loan Programs
In 1998, Congress enacted the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act
(TIFIA; Pub L. 105-178, Title I, Subtitle E, Chapter 1) credit program, offering federal loans,
loan guarantees, and lines of credit to state and local governments to fund certain transporta-
tion infrastructure.4 TIFIA provides state and local governments with access to lower-interest
loans than would otherwise be available. It does not offer grants. Costs are typically borne by
state and local taxpayers or user fees. As described in DOT’s 2014 report to Congress on TIFIA,
the federal government is a “patient investor” whose long-term perspective can make otherwise
unattractive investments more appealing (DOT, 2014). As of January 2017, TIFIA has sup-
ported $26 billion in loans to 64 different projects (DOT, 2017a). Table 3.2 breaks down the
sources of loan repayment. Of the 61 loans in the TIFIA portfolio as of December 31, 2015,
10 were fully repaid and 51 remained open (DOT, 2016b). Projects backed by TIFIA repre-
sent about 10 percent of total capital funding for transportation in the United States from all
sources.5
Table 3.2
Sources of TIFIA Loan Repayments
Type of Revenue Pledge # of Active Loans
Taxes 12
Tolls 11
Managed lanes 9
Other project revenues 7
System pledge 6
Availability payments 6
SOURCE: DOT, 2016b.
4 TIFIA was first authorized in 1998 (23 U.S.C. Chapter 6, Sections 601–609; DOT, Federal Highway Administration,
Office of Innovative Program Delivery, no date-b; DOT, 2014).
5 Drawing on the data in Table 2.1 of $230 billion in 2014 (in 2014 dollars) in spending on highways and mass transit,
TIFIA-induced investment of $26 billion is about 10 percent of the total. Note that Table 2.1 does not record these PPPs as
private expenditures.
The 2015 FAST Act decreased funding for TIFIA from $1 billion in FY 2015 to $275–
$300 million per year for FY 2016 through FY 2020, although it does permit some use of rants
and excess funds from other sources (DOT, 2016b).6 According to a DOT report to Congress,
“[h]istorically, and based on the most current estimates, each $1 of TIFIA program funds will
support a loan of approximately $14 and result in infrastructure investment of up to $40, when
taking into account other state, local, and private-sector investments” (DOT, 2016b).
Building on the TIFIA model, Congress passed the Water Infrastructure Finance and
Innovation Act (WIFIA; Pub L. 113-121, Title V) program in 2014. The EPA describes WIFIA
as a program that “accelerates investment in our nation’s water infrastructure by providing
long-term, low-cost supplemental loans for regionally and nationally significant projects.”
Funds can be used on a wide range of projects, including conveyance, treatment, desalination,
recycling, aquifer recharge, and even property acquisition. The first $20 million of funds were
not appropriated until December 2016 (EPA, no date-c; American Water Works Association,
2016). WIFIA can provide loans to state, local, and tribal governments for all projects eligible
for CWSRF and DWSRF, and other water-related projects. WIFIA borrowers also can include
corporations, trusts, joint ventures of various kinds, and SRFs. This program has the potential
to take advantage of the water utility industry’s very low loan default rate of 0.04 percent and
the possibility of substantially leveraging the federal investment. According to the Congressio-
nal Research Service, “if only an average 10% subsidy cost is charged against budget authority,
a $20 million budgetary allocation theoretically supports $200 million in loans” (Ramseur
and Tiemann, 2017). The credit-rating agency Fitch estimates that one WIFIA dollar can yield
as much as $50–$100, depending on the credit quality of the applicant (FitchRatings, 2017,
p. 1).
Earmarking
Now in disfavor, congressional authorizations and appropriations for specific named trans-
portation and water projects, known as earmarks, were a time-honored way for members of
Congress to bring federal funding to their districts and states. In 2007, and again since 2011,
earmarks were banned for two reasons. First, the obvious: Funds were being allocated based
on the political benefits to members of Congress rather than based on needs as assessed by
the EPA or DOT.7 However, even in the absence of earmarking per se, Congress often directs
funds to specific uses and thus limits their applicability to broader purposes. Second, there
was a concern that earmarks for infrastructure, typically in the form of grants (that is, with no
requirement for payback), limited the availability of federal funding to the SRF funds (loans),
and hence deterred state and local governments from becoming self-sufficient with respect
to infrastructure finance (Copeland, 2006). Figure 3.1 shows the spiky nature of aggregate
federal spending on water infrastructure via SRFs and congressional earmarks for water infra-
structure, shown by the green line.
Trust Funds and Excise Taxes

Revenues from individual income taxes are designated as “federal funds,” which means they
can be appropriated toward any authorization. Other sources of tax revenue can be directed to
6 Funding decreased for TIFIA for somewhat complicated reasons related to a build-up of unobligated balances, DOT’s
inability to process and obligate funds, and the pipeline of projects ready to spend the funding. See Davis (2015).
7 For examples, see Engstrom and Vanberg (2010) and Copeland (2006).
trust funds for use only on specifically authorized programs or activities. For example, payroll
taxes, which are paid partially by the employer and partially by the employee, go toward the
Social Security Trust Fund and the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund for use by the Social Secu-
rity and Medicare programs, respectively.
While income and payroll taxes account for the vast majority of federal tax revenue, they
are not the only revenue source. A smaller source of federal tax revenue is excise taxes, which
are an additional tax levied on the sale of certain products, such as gasoline, tobacco, and
liquor. Trust funds can be used to tie excise tax revenue to particular programs or activities.
The Highway Trust Fund, established in the Federal-Aid Aid Highway Act of 1956, receives
revenue from the 18.4-cents-per-gallon tax on gasoline and the 24.4-cents-per-gallon tax on
diesel fuel (and other related excise taxes). Only Congress has the authority to raise these taxes,
and there is no mechanism for automatic adjustments for inflation.
Tax Exemptions
Congress also uses the federal tax code to implement national policy by giving tax credits and
deductions8 to individuals and firms in return for making certain expenditures, such as for
R&D, renewable energy development, fossil energy development, energy efficiency, and liter-
ally thousands of other types of expenditures.
Most relevant for infrastructure, municipal bonds issued by local governments pay inves-
tors interest that is exempt from federal taxation. All states waive state income taxes on interest
payments, as well. Tax-exempt bonds are very popular with states, cities, counties, and other
entities, because they enable those governments to borrow money for qualified projects at
lower interest rates than other financing options. Indeed, municipal bonds are the dominant
form of financing local infrastructure, with $446 billion of municipal bonds issued in 2016
(First Trust Advisors, 2017).9 Total municipal bonds outstanding peaked at $3.9 trillion in
2010 and, as of the end of 2016, are at around $3.8 trillion (Securities Industry and Financial
Markets Association, 2017b). Municipal defaults are rare relative to corporate defaults, despite
some notable recent examples. In 2013, only 0.107 percent of municipal issuers defaulted, com-
pared with 2.1 percent of corporate issuers (Standard & Poor’s Ratings, 2017). According to a
2014 Department of Treasury report, between 1970 and 2011, “this differential has been even
higher: roughly 12 percent on the corporate side versus approximately 0.3 percent for munici-
pal debt” (U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Economic Policy, 2014).10
Some tax policy experts argue that municipal bonds are an inefficient means of allocat-
ing infrastructure investment (Greenberg, 2016). They assert that the exemption encourages
overinvestment by state and local governments, costs the federal treasury more than state and
local governments gain in the form of lower interest payments, and mainly benefits the higher-
income households that claim the tax break. Because the main incentive for purchasing these
lower-yielding bonds is that the interest is tax-free, 75 percent of municipal bonds are held
directly or indirectly by individual taxpayers. The remaining bonds are held by insurance
companies and commercial banks, although their total holdings of these bonds are limited by
8 A tax credit reduces a taxpayer or firm’s tax liability on a dollar-for-dollar basis. A tax deduction lowers taxable income
at the taxpayer or firm’s marginal tax rate (Internal Revenue Service, no date).
9 Half of the bond issues from the states of California, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, and New Jersey
(Greenberg, 2016).
10 Data on municipal bond default rates drawn from Pylypczak (2011).
tax regulations. Organizations such as public pension funds that do not pay taxes have little
incentive to invest in tax-exempt bonds, where the return on investment is less attractive than
taxable opportunities (U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Economic Policy, 2014).
After years of debate, the United States still lacks a political consensus on whether munic-
ipal bonds should be the financing method of choice for local governments or whether there
should be a federal subsidy at all. Other countries manage to build and maintain their infra-
structure without tax-exempt municipal bonds. The U.S. Treasury Department argues for
eliminating the exemption because of its inefficiencies and to remove the exemption’s distor-
tionary effects on capital flows and increase tax revenues in the process (U.S. Department of
the Treasury, 2017). Were Congress to lower tax rates across the board, demand for such bonds
would weaken.
Tax Credits
Tax credits that directly reduce tax liabilities are a blunt instrument. They spur investors to
identify opportunities that meet a market test of profitability, albeit at a lower rate of return
than they would expect for a taxable investment. But these are not necessarily the projects from
which the public benefits most.11 The most attractive investments, from a private investor’s per-
spective, are those with easily tapped revenue streams, regardless of the public benefits. New
tax credits also can have the unintended consequence of displacing investments that would
have been made without them. Tax credits also can be transferred among parties, making
them difficult to track. Thus, valuable public capital in the form of tax credits risks being
deployed less effectively than with more-targeted mechanisms.
State and Local Funding and Finance
More than three quarters of U.S. infrastructure spending occurs at the state and local levels.
State and local governments typically borrow the large upfront construction costs, which are
then paid back over time using revenue from taxes or user fees. There are several ways in which
this borrowing and repayment can occur.
Bonds
Local government bonds are effectively crowd-sourced loans that are typically repaid over 30
years. Bonds may be paid back by future tax revenue, user fees collected after the infrastructure
is operational, or both. The most common type of bond is the tax-exempt municipal revenue
bond discussed in the previous section. Tax-exempt municipal bonds have been local govern-
ments’ overwhelming favorite financing mechanism in the past (National Association of Clean
Water Agencies and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, 2013). At the same time,
they carry the risk of growing municipal debt collateralized with revenue streams that may or
may not be available, depending on the economic fortunes of the local governments involved
11 In practical terms, the Internal Revenue Service will not be equipped to “pre-approve” the use of tax credits to ensure
consistency with national or even local benefits or even compliance with whatever rules are put in place; only through audits
after the fact would the Internal Revenue Service be in a position to identify potential fraud or abuse.
(U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2016).12 Not all municipalities are disciplined
about applying the revenues generated from infrastructure investments to pay bondholders
(Braun, 2016).
Because tax-exempt bonds cannot be used for infrastructure that directly benefits the
private sector, another class of tax-exempt bonds was created called Private Activity Bonds
(PABs) (DOT, Federal Highway Administration, Office of Innovative Program Delivery, no
date-d). PABs are used by state and local governments for infrastructure with both private-
sector involvement and public benefit, such as airports, docks and wharves, and sewage facili-
ties. Over the years, efforts have been made to increase the attractiveness of these bonds by
providing various financial benefits to potential purchasers and by removing constraints, such
as borrowing cap restrictions.13 It should be noted that TIFIA provides lower cost of capital
and flexible terms to entice more PPPs, and PABs are often a critical part of PPP arrangements.
Critics, including CBO, argue that direct subsidies would be more efficient than PABs; elimi-
nating PABs could increase revenues by $31 billion by 2023 (CBO, 2013).
Another type of bond is a “direct pay” bond. These are taxable bonds issued by state and
local governments for which the federal government subsidizes a percentage of interest pay-
able on the bond (U.S. Department of the Treasury, no date). For example, if the bond issuer
borrows $1 million at a 5 percent interest rate, the lender receives $1.05 million, assuming a
term of one year. If the federal government pays 20 percent of the interest, then the state or
local government that issued the bond pays only $1.04 million and the federal government
pays $0.01 million. The state or local government that issued the bond effectively paid a lower
interest rate, and lenders receive an interest rate competitive with market rates. Build America
Bonds (BABs), created by the 2009 ARRA when the municipal bond market was ailing, are
one example of a popular direct pay bond.14 In justifying their introduction, the U.S. Treasury
noted:
These bonds are designed to attract investment in U.S. infrastructure from banks and
insurance companies, as well as public pension funds and foreign investors that are not sub-
ject to U.S. income tax, and so are unlikely to invest in traditional tax-exempt municipal
debt. (U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Economic Policy, 2014)
During the life of the program (April 2009 through December 2010), 2,275 BABs were issued
with a total value of $181 billion. BABs represented 23.1 percent of the total dollar value of
municipal bonds borrowed during the life of the program (U.S. Department of the Treasury,
no date). Some policy experts have advocated for a revival of BABs, albeit subsidized at a lower
rate than the 2009–2010 period (Puentes, Sabol, and Kane, 2013; Eizenga, 2011). The viability
of these types of bonds in the future will depend in large measure on assurances to investors
12 “In 1945, there was less than $20 billion of municipal debt outstanding. In 1960, there was $66 billion of municipal debt
outstanding. In 1981, there was $361 billion of municipal debt outstanding. Today, investors hold approximately $3.7 tril-
lion of municipal debt” (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2016).
13 Section 11143 of Title XI of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users
(SAFETEA-LU; Pub L. 109-59) amended Section 142(a) of the Internal Revenue Code to add highway and freight transfer
facilities to the types of privately developed and operated projects for which PABs may be issued.
14 There are three types of Build America Bonds (BABs): direct pay BABs, tax-credit BABs, and recovery zone economic
development BABs (U.S. Department of Treasury, no date).
from Congress that the subsidy will be sustained over the lifetime of the bonds. That was not
the case with the short-lived BABs.
Another type of bond used by SIBs and specific to highways is called a Grant Anticipa-
tion Revenue Vehicle (GARVEE). The idea is for a state to offer a method of financing con-
struction in anticipation of a federal-aid grant in the future, and then using the grant in part
to pay financing costs (DOT, Federal Highway Administration, Office of Innovative Program
Delivery, no date-c).
A relatively new type of bond based on “pay for performance” is called an Environmental
Impact Bond and was recently used to support a “green infrastructure” project in Washington,
D.C. (DC Water, 2017). The $25 million infrastructure bond is being used to reduce storm
water runoff into local waterways. A preliminary study was conducted to predict the amount of
runoff that will be reduced. If post-construction monitoring finds the reduction in storm water
is significantly less than expected, investors will pay the city $3.3 million. If post-construction
monitoring finds the reduction in storm water is significantly greater than expected, the city
will pay the investors $3.3 million (Goldman Sachs, no date). The idea is to reduce DC Water’s
downside risk if these investments underperform, but reward investors if they overperform.
Tying payments to outcomes can shift risk from state and local governments to the private
sector, which can be efficient in many cases. The approach requires outcomes that can be
objectively measured using independent methods agreed to in advance by all involved parties.
Direct Spending from General Revenues

General revenues are derived from income, sales, and property taxes—sources not directly
related to the use to which they are put, unlike some sales and excise taxes that are linked
directly to transportation or other improvements. General revenues are essentially put into a
common pool, out of which state and local governments pay for public safety, education, and
health care, among many other public demands (Boschetti, 2014).15 Figure 3.2 presents the
fraction of state and local highway expenditures potentially covered by user fees and fuel taxes.
In many states, most of the revenue from these sources is directed toward transportation infra-
structure, such as highways and bridges, but may be used for mass transit, bicycle paths, trails
and walkways, and other transportation-related projects (Herr, 2009). Additional costs must
be covered by general revenue or transfers to the state from the federal government. In other
words, Figure 3.2 provides a very rough estimate of the fraction of highway costs paid by user
fees versus taxpayer dollars. To the extent that infrastructure projects are financed by user fees,
the available funds reflect the demand for that infrastructure. When deciding how to allocate
general revenue funds, legislators must rely on other, often less direct measures of demand for
various infrastructure projects. On average, about half of the costs of highways are covered by
user fees rather than general funds, but the ratio varies widely across states.
Rationale for Public-Private Partnerships
Another method of financing the costs of building and maintaining infrastructure is to have
the private sector pay construction costs up front in exchange for the right to collect a revenue
15 Alsosee publications from the “Center for Transportation Excellence” for extensive data about sales taxes used all over
the country for transportation funding (Center for Transportation Excellence, no date-a).
Figure 3.2
State and Local Revenue from Transportation-Specific Sources as a Fraction of Total State and Local
Expenditure on Highways
1.0
0.9 50th percentile

25th and 75th percentiles
0.8
0.7
Revenue/expenditures
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
1977 1984 1991 1998 2005 2012
Year
SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau state and local finance data, accessed via Tax Policy Center (no date).
NOTES: The figure displays the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles (by state) for the ratio of total highway-relevant
revenue to expenditures on highways. Here highway-relevant revenue includes local and state revenue from
motor fuel taxes, motor vehicle and motor vehicle operators’ licenses, and tolls or other revenue from highway
operation. Our methodology is intentionally similar to the 2011 estimates in Henchman (2014).
RAND RR1739-3.2
stream over time generated from the services provided by the infrastructure. Operating fran-
chises are another common arrangement, and these do not cover construction costs up front.
Such agreements are PPPs, and the details vary widely regarding who owns or is responsible
for what aspects of the infrastructure, and for how long. For example, in a build-own-operate
transaction, a contractor pays to construct, maintain, and operate a facility in exchange for the
associated revenues. In some PPP structures, the private sector owns the infrastructure, while
in other cases the government leases the infrastructure to the private sector for a number of
years. In other PPP structures, the public entity may sell rights to a private partner to collect
revenue from new or previously constructed infrastructure in exchange for covering opera-
tion and maintenance. In other PPPs, the government may pay a private firm for providing a
service.16
Private-sector involvement in building or maintaining infrastructure is not always in
exchange for revenue from the infrastructure. In some cases, the private sector may be con-
tracted to provide a specific service, such as O&M, in exchange for a fixed or performance-
based fee. In another case, known as developer financing, “the private party (usually a real
estate developer) finances the construction or expansion of a public facility in exchange for
the right to build residential housing, commercial stores, and/or industrial facilities at the site”
(GAO, 1999).
16 A useful graphic of the common flavors of PPPs in the United States can be found in Table 2.2 of BPC (2016).
The role of private finance in public infrastructure is complicated. First, as a baseline

condition, any owner of infrastructure, public or private, needs to be fully accountable to the
public in its compliance with applicable environmental and other safety and health standards.
Second, the question of how financial risk is shared between the public and private partners in
a PPP is not settled policy in the United States. Indeed, 17 states still lack enabling legislation
to form PPPs (BPC, 2016, Figure 4.2, p. 40).
Private funding of major infrastructure has a long and mixed history in the United States:
Investments in canals failed as private railroads, with considerable help from the government,
displaced them. For example, in 1862 the federal government encouraged the Union Pacific
and Central Pacific railroads to extend their networks westward by granting them “alternat-
ing sections” of land that they could sell or develop for profit that helped finance their railway
investment (Ambrose, 2000). Today, most port facilities (but not the harbors themselves), rail-
roads, and energy systems also are provided through private investment. In some states, pri-
vate investment in roads was forbidden by legislation, but that is now changing (BPC, 2016).
With mixed success, the private sector has gone into the business of building and operating
highways, such as with build-operate-transfer transactions. In 2012, the Chicago City Council
established the Chicago Infrastructure Trust to raise private capital for public works (Green-
field, 2013). The trust is proceeding slowly as it deals with concerns among the public about
the level of accountability and transparency in decisionmaking and risk acceptance, problems
that are discussed in the next section. Meanwhile, with congressional approval, DOT has cre-
ated the “Build America Bureau” to foster collaborations with the private sector (DOT, 2017b).
These initiatives demonstrate that the public sector is now actively inviting the entry of
the private sector, which has always been a willing party as long as money could be made. The
problem has been that most infrastructure projects do not produce revenue in excess of costs.
Risk Sharing
In addition to levying new taxes or raising tax rates to pay for infrastructure, governments may
assume that a project, perhaps a new bridge that connects an underdeveloped area to a central
business district, will raise property values or increase the amount of taxable wages earned in
the future. Methods such as “value capture taxation” seek to collect revenue based on these
increases in land values (Chapman, 2017). Value capture taxation, popular in Australia and
other places, has been slow to take hold in the United States, but the concept is receiving more
attention as a means of augmenting other financing sources for transportation. It includes such
approaches as transit impact fees, property tax increment financing, special assessment dis-
tricts, and increased property taxes (Moliere, 2017).
An important aspect of risk sharing in PPP arrangements relates to which party bears
the risk of financial losses if, for example, revenue from tolls or fees is lower than forecast or
declines over time as alternative travel options become available. An example is a 2011 PPP
that secured a contract to construct a tunnel in Norfolk, Virginia. Authorities are planning to
build a parallel tunnel to alleviate major traffic congestion in the region, but the 2011 PPP with
a Swedish construction company included a “noncompete” clause that requires local jurisdic-
tions to compensate the company for any lost revenue resulting from traffic diverted to a new
tunnel (Laris, 2016). Private investors have demonstrated more skill in shielding themselves
from financial risk than their public-sector counterparts. Many projects have had to be restruc-
tured when debt could not be repaid by underperforming assets. Often, in transportation at
least, the public agency guarantees the private return through “availability payments,” whereby
the concessionaire receives a periodic “availability” payment from the public partner based on
the availability of a facility to deliver service at a specified performance level.
A more positive example of risk sharing is the plan for the California High Speed Rail,
often called a PPP. The public sector is to spend $70 billion to build it and then turn it over to
a private operator/franchisee to run it.17 The private sector ultimately is expected to have “skin
in the game” by sharing some of the risk associated with the system’s performance, which it
would not have if it simply contracted to operate a system.
Constraints on Funding and Financing at the State and Local Levels

Many states are subject to tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) set by their own legisla-
tures, which restrict the amount of revenue state and local governments can spend or raise.
Figure 3.3 shows TELs only as they apply to state expenditures and state revenues.18 Although
TELs come in a variety of forms, most “tie annual spending limits to a combination of the
inflation rate and the population growth rate. They typically involve the disposition of surplus
state revenue, and are used as mechanisms to cap the rate of increase in specific tax rates, most
often property tax rates” (Hill et al., 2006). There is intense disagreement about the impacts
of TELs. Proponents cite the ability of well-constructed TELs to limit the size of government
(New, 2001). Opponents argue that “TELs are largely ineffective and that state officials can
circumvent them by raising money through fees” (Kousser, McCubbins, and Moule, 2008),
that TELs may raise borrowing costs (Poterba and Reuben, 1999), and that TELs harm overall
economic growth through mechanisms such as encouraging underinvestment in infrastructure
(Deller, Stallmann, and Amiel, 2012; Deller et al., 2013).
While TELs explicitly limit infrastructure funding, they also impose de facto restric-
tions on infrastructure finance options. A major limitation on private-sector involvement is
the complexity of policies and regulations defining ways in which the private sector can be
involved in infrastructure finance. Private investors are loath to invest in infrastructure until
clear ground rules governing the PPP are in place. At the same time, these rules vary state-by-
state and election-by-election (BPC, 2016), rendering a “patchwork of legal environments and
procurement practices” that limits PPP investment because of the uncertainty and hence risk
to investment returns. This is referred to as procurement risk. Many, including a U.S. Treasury–
led task force, have recommended better coordination of regulations (U.S. Department of the
Treasury, Office of Economic Policy, 2014; BPC, 2016). This high degree of uncertainty in
securing political and regulatory approvals makes the estimate of return on investment highly
uncertain, as well.
Local government procurement practices present another barrier to PPPs. This barrier
arises from the confluence of two factors: (1) the absence of a requirement in local bid docu-
ments to estimate the project’s revenue stream based on full- and life-cycle cost recovery prin-
ciples, and (2) the differences in costs between tax-exempt financing available to public bor-
rowers and the higher market-rate financing available to the private sector. Public and private
parties need to be able to generate an attractive rate of return, net of borrowing costs. In the
vast majority of local procurements, where 95 percent of spending on water infrastructure
17 This is a plan and a hope, and by no means a certainty (California High Speed Rail Authority, 2016, Section 6: “Fund-
ing and Financing”).
18 Not included, for example, is California’s Proposition 13, a well-known revenue limitation that has hamstrung local
governments in California for decades (California Tax Data, no date).
Figure 3.3
Tax and Expenditure Limitations, 2010
Revenue, n = 4
Spending, n = 23
Combination of above, n = 3
No tax or expenditure limit, n = 20
SOURCE: Waisanen, 2017. Used with permission.

RAND RR1739-2.5
is taking place, tax-exempt financing provides public borrowers with the advantage of lower
borrowing costs over private investors. However, if local bidding procedures allowed investors
to receive a revenue stream that reflected full- and life-cycle cost recovery, the private sector
could potentially overcome its disadvantage in borrowing costs through more-attractive rev-
enue streams, and PPPs could be more competitive with a public-only finance model.19
Finally, there is simply the risk of building something ambitious and long-lasting in a rap-
idly changing economy and technological environment. The amount of revenue that will flow
from a project that will last for decades is difficult to predict. Estimates of usage or demand
and estimates of capital and operating costs are prone to large errors. Some technologies could
make the useful lives of assets shorter or require major reinvestment to extend their use, but
other technologies could enhance the efficiency of maintenance procedures (e.g., embedded
sensors) and lengthen the lives of assets. Roads also may need to be modified to provide wire-
less dynamic charging of electric vehicles, which could prove to be a potential revenue stream,
or adapted for use by autonomous vehicles. We know that some public projects will never gen-
erate sufficient revenue to cover costs, but we rarely can predict which projects they are. The
demand for many services is difficult to predict, and projects have failed because forecasted
urban development and traffic have failed to materialize when expected, although growth in
demand may eventually come to pass after a long period of operating in a deficit. This is in
19 G. T. Mehan, private communication, 2017.

addition to barriers presented by the patchwork of procurement practices and is simply a fact
of life in public infrastructure investment.
Findings
The flow of capital and O&M funding into public infrastructure is shaped by the economics of
the projects themselves and tax and investment policies at all levels of government. Infrastruc-
ture projects that generate revenues greater than their costs of construction and maintenance
generally get built, although some of these projects may falter for reasons other than inad-
equate capital or cash flows for maintenance. Compared with other developed countries, the
U.S. infrastructure market still attracts relatively little private capital into public infrastructure
at the state and local levels, potentially because low-interest public financing crowds out pri-
vate investment. Nonetheless, there are some promising developments through the TIFIA and
WIFIA programs and changes in state-level policies intended to encourage PPPs. The biggest
challenge for the public sector in crafting PPPs is to incentivize private investment while also
managing risks to taxpayers through terms that ensure accountability and transparency over
the life of the project. This has proved to be easier said than done.
Some public works projects have diffuse and long-term benefits that cannot be easily
monetized through user fees or customer charges. These tend to be the projects least attractive
to private investors seeking a predictable return competitive with other investment options.
Mass transit projects fall into this category. While it is easy to monetize the direct use of a mass
transit system through fares, affordability and equity concerns tend to put a ceiling on how
high those fares can be set. Further, it is more difficult to convert side benefits, such as reduced
congestion and emissions, into a revenue stream. Thus far in the U.S. experience, paying for
the more diffuse and longer-term benefits of public infrastructure still requires tax revenues
generated from a broader base of the population—for example, through income, property,
sales, or excise taxes—to make up for the shortfall in revenue from user fees.
CHAPTER FOUR
Federal Transportation Policy and Its Impact on Infrastructure

Investment
In this chapter, we examine the particular features of transportation infrastructure that com-
plicate its construction, maintenance, and repair. What we refer to as transportation infrastruc-
ture consists of facilities that are, for the most part, owned and operated by public agencies.
Roads, ports, airports, and public transit lines are generally planned, managed, and operated
by governmental or quasi-governmental agencies, but, with the exception of mass transit sys-
tems, those facilities and networks are heavily used by privately owned companies and their
vehicles. Private companies operate the ships calling at U.S. ports, the airlines in American
skies, and the trucks on U.S. roads. And, of course, ubiquitous automobiles are operated by
individuals, households, and businesses that own or lease them. One notable exception to this
ownership pattern is provided by freight railroads, which typically own their tracks, yards, and
rolling stock. In some cases, they also lease capacity to public passenger rail operators, such as
Amtrak, in addition to operating their own trains. Our focus in this chapter is on highways,
roads, and bridges.
Challenges of Building and Maintaining Transportation Infrastructure
Those who operate or travel on transportation infrastructure differ from those who own, plan,
maintain, and operate the infrastructure. Owners, operators, and users of that infrastructure
often have conflicting interests.
Conflicting Interests
The largely private users of transportation facilities seek to maximize returns by shifting as
much of the burden as possible to infrastructure providers while paying as little as possible to
use it. Truckers, for example, demand better roads of public system providers and try to lower
costs by taking actions, such as overloading trucks, that shift costs to the public sector (DOT,
Federal Highway Administration, Office of Policy and Governmental Affairs, 1997, pp. 1–13).
Truckers have every reason to overload trucks to the point that they damage roads because
doing so increases their returns in the short run (National Research Council, Transportation
Research Board, 1997, pp. 24–25). While charging trucks directly for the costs they impose on
the system is possible—for example, by charging weight-distance fees, as is done in Oregon,
Germany, and elsewhere—this is often the exception. Partial or even full cost recovery is
achievable through user fees, which in many places is politically unpalatable. Governments
instead opt to raise funds indirectly—through bond issues, sales taxes, or gasoline taxes paid
47
largely by owners of autos that do less damage to the roads but are far more numerous than
trucks (Balducci and Stowers, 2008; Day et al., 2014; Martin, Bell, and Walton, 2014; Montu-
far and Clayton, 1998).
Variability in Demand over Space and Time

Transportation system users demand high-quality system performance and adequate capac-
ity at peak hours. Efforts to space out use by raising prices for peak-period travel have been
adopted throughout the world, including in the United States, most commonly by introducing
time-of-day tolling or high-occupancy tolling (HOT) lanes. But peak pricing remains unde-
rutilized, mainly because of the public’s aversion to new or higher fees (Downs, 2004; Small,
2001).
Similarly, travel demand is highly concentrated in busy places: high-capacity and high-
volume facilities that constitute a small portion of the transportation system. The rural roads,
urban neighborhood streets, and local rail branch lines that constitute most of the trans-
portation network carry a small fraction of traffic but are essential to providing access and
connectivity (King, Manville, and Shoup, 2007; Wachs, 2005). Citizens must accept, and
policymakers must manage, the financial burdens associated with simultaneously providing
and maintaining crowded superhighways, major regional hub airports, crowded international
ports, and a rich network of lightly traveled feeder routes and supportive facilities serving every
travel mode.
Features of Federal Policy and Programs
There has never been an explicit federal transportation infrastructure policy. A carefully articu-
lated current statement of federal transportation priorities, Beyond Traffic, 2045: Trends and
Choices, outlines principles upon which there is widespread agreement, though it is too abstract
to constitute policy guidance to state and local governments (DOT, 2015).1
Federal Government’s Limited Role in Transportation Infrastructure

Federal involvement in infrastructure for transport has long reflected a history of partner-
ships with and incentives to the private sector and, more recently, state and local governments
(Wells, 2012). The federal government does not operate, manage, or control most transporta-
tion infrastructure. It is one actor in a transportation infrastructure network that has national
consequences but, by design, is highly decentralized. Most rural roads and urban streets are
under the control of local governments. Major arterial roads and highways between cities are
controlled by state departments of transportation and, in some cases, by special-purpose toll
road authorities. Most ports and airports are operated by branches of local government or
special authorities. Railways, airlines, and trucking are mostly controlled by the private sector
(Weiner, 2013). These patterns are reflected in the expenditures by transportation infrastruc-
ture type, summarized in Table 2.1.
The federal government does directly own and operate some important elements of the
national system—such as roads on federal lands, the air traffic control system, and the Transpor-
1 See especially the chapter entitled “How We Align Decisions and Dollars,” pp. 148–185.
Federal Transportation Policy and Its Impact on Infrastructure Investment 49
tation Security Administration. However, transportation infrastructure policy is most usefully

viewed as a decentralized network of programs with many public and private constituencies.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) was created in 1967 to streamline and
integrate the wide variety of transportation infrastructure programs, but it consists to this day
of separate agencies that address separate modes of transportation. Each reflects its unique his-
tory and particular mix of public and private participants (Weingroff, 2016). Despite calls for
integration, five decades later, policies and legislation continue to treat the modes separately.
Aviation, maritime, railroad, transit, and highway transportation modes differ to such a great
extent that they require specialized knowledge. For example, safety regulations for railroad cars
and for pipelines have nothing in common. And each mode of transportation has a unique his-
tory of funding and finance. Over time, the programs and cross-modal institutions have dem-
onstrated their capacity to collaborate—and conflict—with one another. For example, since
1962, states and metropolitan areas have been required under federal law to designate and fund
“metropolitan planning organizations” (MPOs). MPOs develop and implement long-range
multimodal transportation plans mobilizing and integrating elements of federal programs and
funding streams that operate separately by mode (Sciara and Wachs, 2007). To spend federal
funds on transportation infrastructure, states and metropolitan areas are required to certify
that projects are compliant with plans developed by MPOs, which are updated periodically
and approved by the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration.
These plans, by definition, are financially constrained, in that they must include realistic plans
for funding the implementation of the projects that comprise the regional plans (DOT, Federal
Highway Administration, 2017d).
Dominance of Local and State Governments in Transportation Infrastructure

As citizens demanded better roads during the early 20th century, states began to provide inter-
city highways, and the dramatic growth of automobile travel strained state budgets. By 1920,
roads and bond payments for roads were the largest items in many state budgets. States intro-
duced motor fuel taxes to help expand and maintain their growing road networks. Fuel taxes
cost far less than toll roads because they did not require the building and staffing of toll booths.
And fuel taxes charged those who used roads: In an era when a small proportion of the popula-
tion used roads for intercity travel, it seemed fair to charge users rather than taxpayers.
By World War II, all the states had adopted motor fuel taxation, and most limited the use
of these taxes to roadbuilding and maintenance by creating “trust funds” and prohibiting user
fees to be used for purposes other than transportation. Gradually, some states added toll roads
or turnpikes in high-volume corridors, such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the New York
Thruway, which were financed by tolls, and especially where roads were used by long-distance
travelers, including large numbers of residents and trucks from other states.
The federal government responded at first modestly. Before 1900, it created an “Office
of Road Inquiry” to improve the science and engineering of roadbuilding. Later, it gave states
money to improve “post roads” that were used to carry mail between communities. Gradu-
ally, the federal role in the provision of transportation infrastructure grew to recognize the
importance of roads to interstate commerce. Between the world wars, the federal government
provided aid to the states for what were known as “Federal Aid Primary” road networks con-
necting major centers, and “Federal Aid Secondary” networks that provided access to the pri-
mary network. The federal role was to support state and local responsibilities for transporta-
tion infrastructure, although advocates sought special treatment for particular long-distance
roads, such as the Lincoln Highway, dedicated in 1913, that ran from New York City to San
Francisco.2
Expansion of the Federal Role in the Second Half of the 20th Century
After more than 40 years of advocacy and debate, the National System of Interstate and Defense
Highways (commonly known as the Interstate Highway System) took shape in the 1950s, and
the federal Highway Trust Fund, modeled after earlier state trust funds, was created to finance
it.3 Congress clearly articulated that states were the decisionmakers and provided them with
90 percent of the construction costs of interstate highways. In return, states agreed to build
roads in compliance with a set of national standards, match federal funding with 10 percent of
state funding, and maintain the highways they owned (Seely, 1998).
Auto travel caused major disruption to the businesses that had been running mass transit.
Many went bankrupt and were acquired by the public sector. That is why, today, mass transit
is almost entirely in the hands of local governments or special units of government created as
joint powers authorities. Rail transit could, in theory, be financially self-sustaining if methods
such as land value capture were used to supplement fares. However, rail transit carries massive
fixed costs that are difficult to recover through affordable fares (Jones, 2008).
Congress enabled federal participation in grants and loans for local transit operations by
allowing highway user fees to be spent in limited ways on public transit as well. City leaders
and transit advocates see this as a necessary and appropriate expenditure to achieve environ-
mental goals and to increase urban accessibility; they portray transit as a complement to high-
way systems. Other interests consider the use of funds derived from highway users for mass
transit to be an inappropriate “diversion” of user fees for new purposes (Poole, 2015).
Evolution and Influence of Federal Regulatory Requirements

The federal role in transportation is subtle and complex, reflecting its evolution. While the
federal government does not directly choose where and what highways and bridges are built,
unless they are located on federal land, it exerts a strong influence on how projects are built
through extensive environmental and safety regulations and by requiring states to meet cer-
tain obligations to be eligible for federal funding. Many of the regulations and obligations are
implemented by DOT, but others are overseen by different federal agencies, such as the EPA
and the USACE.
Federal transportation funds, including fuel tax revenues, are available to states on the
basis of allocation formulas, while other funds are available to states that compete for them
by submitting proposals to federal agencies’ discretionary programs. Federal priorities change
from time to time; these are explicitly enunciated in federal transportation authorization bills
that are enacted by Congress—typically every five or six years. These priorities influence agency
decisions when applications for funding are reviewed.
Requirements for federal funding include provisions of the Civil Rights Act, the Execu-
tive Order on Environmental Justice (DOT, Federal Highway Administration, 2017e), rigorous
review and public comment under the terms of the National Environmental Protection Act,
2 The Lincoln Highway was conceived in 1912 and dedicated in 1913 (Lincoln Highway Association, no date).
3 The federal Highway Trust Fund was created through the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. A 1947 map of the then-
proposed National System of Interstate and Defense Highways is available at
http://ajfroggie.com/roads/yellowbook/conus-1947.jpg.
current requirements under the Clean Air Act Amendments, permit approval by the USACE
under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act if projects impinge upon navigable waterways or
threaten to harm the quality of drinking water, and permit approval by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service for “incidental taking” of endangered species (Lederman and Wachs, 2016).
When transportation infrastructure projects are planned and built in coastal zones, they are
also subject to limitations and permitting requirements under federal coastal zone protection
legislation (DOT, Federal Highway Administration, no date).
Issues in Funding
The Highway Trust Fund was to be fed by a uniform national tax on gasoline and diesel fuel
paid by consumers, truckers, and others at the gas pump. The principle behind this fuel excise
tax was that roads should be paid for by those who use them. Motor fuel taxes, set in 1993
at 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24 cents per gallon for diesel fuels, are the Highway
Trust Fund’s main dedicated revenue source. Taxes on the sale of heavy vehicles and truck
tires also bring in smaller amounts of revenue. These taxes contributed to a growing Highway
Trust Fund for many decades as auto ownership grew, and increasing miles driven per driver
compounded that growth.
Congress has not raised the per-gallon federal gasoline excise tax since 1993, and because
the tax is not tied to inflation, it has declined in real value over time. The principal objection
to raising the fuel tax has been that the price of fuel has risen and legislators do not wish to
burden taxpayers more by charging them even more (U.S. Energy Information Administra-
tion, 2017). Further, technological innovations have enabled cars to drive more miles on the
same amount of fuel, meaning that, over time, drivers pay increasingly less for each mile they
drive. Congress encouraged this shift by enacting increasingly stringent fuel economy stan-
dards and incentives for buying electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles; whether this trend
will continue in the Trump Administration remains to be seen. However, the result is that
Americans are driving more but paying less fuel tax, creating a crisis in transportation financ-
ing. Since 2008, Congress has had to repeatedly “top up” the Highway Trust Fund with gen-
eral funds, totaling $143.6 billion as of 2016 (Kirk and Mallett, 2016).
Many alternatives have been proposed for financing transportation infrastructure, includ-
ing revenues from the sale of strategic oil reserves, from repatriated corporate profits on foreign
operations, or from a revamped fuel tax. One idea is a tax linked to both inflation and aver-
age fuel efficiency. This would create a stable flow of revenue per average mile driven (Crane,
Burger, and Wachs, 2012). Owners of cars with lower fuel efficiency would pay a higher tax
rate per mile driven than owners of higher-efficiency vehicles. This would move the United
States closer to pay-per-use infrastructure than funding transportation purely through general
tax revenue, though taxpayers would still need to supplement the user fees. Others propose to
treat the fuel tax as a carbon tax and exempt electric vehicles from taxation even though they
still use the roads. In the end, a fee-collection approach based on vehicle miles traveled is the
form closest to matching users to payers and hence connect the costs of highways to those who
benefit the most (Sorenson, Ecola, and Wachs, 2012).
State and Local Alternatives to Motor Fuel Taxes

Because revenues from motor fuel taxes are declining and the widespread application of new
and more direct forms of user fees are not likely to become widespread for decades, there are
two national trends toward new forms of financing transportation infrastructure. Many cities
and counties are increasingly enacting voter-approved sales taxes to support road and transit
projects. In California alone, more than 20 counties have adopted local sales taxes that are
earmarked specifically for transportation projects (Crabbe et al., 2005), and the Center for
Transit Excellence reports on local ballot measures in literally hundreds of jurisdictions across
the country over many years (Center for Transportation Excellence, no date-b). For example,
in 2015 there were 34 transportation tax measures on ballots across the nation, and 24 were
approved (Center for Transportation Excellence, no date-b). As a reflection of voters’ growing
perception of need, there were 77 transportation-funding propositions on ballots in 26 states
on the November 8, 2016, ballot, of which 55 passed (Center for Transportation Excellence,
no date-b).
In addition, states are increasingly adopting more-direct user-financed facilities in the
form of toll roads, including roads that incorporate some form of congestion pricing, in which
road charges are higher during periods of high demand. In many instances, such facilities are
being financed by private investors who are able to monetize the expected revenue streams
from projected traffic growth. State initiatives in transportation finance are discussed further
in Chapter Three.
Conditions and Needs Assessments
Federal transportation laws for many decades have required that DOT publish systematic
assessments of the “conditions and performance” of the surface transportation system. These
biannual reports incorporate estimates of resources that would be required to meet anticipated
needs. States are required to participate by carefully monitoring the condition of infrastructure
assets and by forecasting future population, economic growth, and travel volumes. The pro-
cess of assessing the condition of pavement, bridges, and transit structures has become more
precise during recent decades, as agencies have replaced traditional periodic visual inspections
with technological approaches that include test vehicles that traverse pavements and record ride
smoothness, the use of sensors embedded in facilities, and radars that penetrate structures to
assess internal components. Assessing current conditions is the first critical step in the assess-
ment of needs.
The 2013 federal Conditions and Performance Report states that all levels of government in
2010 spent a combined $205.3 billion for highway-related purposes and a combined $54.3 bil-
lion for transit-related purposes (DOT, Federal Highway Administration, Office of Policy and
Governmental Affairs, 2014). The report goes on to estimate that the average annual capital
investment level needed to maintain the conditions and performance of highways and bridges
at 2010 levels through the year 2030 ranges from $65.3 billion to $86.3 billion per year,
depending on the future rate of growth in vehicle miles traveled. Improving the conditions and
performance of highways and bridges by implementing all cost-beneficial investments would
cost an estimated $123.7 billion to $145.9 billion per year. These investments would be in addi-
tion to annual expenditures on O&M. In its 2015 update on conditions, the Federal High-
way Administration estimated that increasing spending on highways and bridges by around
2.8 percent annually above inflation through 2032 would eliminate its projected maintenance
backlog nationwide (DOT, Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administra-
tion, 2016).
Aggregate national statistics on infrastructure condition and their consequent cost, how-
ever, mask salient regional or local differences. The data in DOT’s Conditions and Performance
report for 2015 show that the physical condition of the most heavily traveled roads improved
a bit, and the condition of lesser-traveled roads worsened a bit in terms of pavement condition.
If performance is measured in terms of congestion, that generally worsened over the past few
years (DOT, Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration, 2016). In
absolute terms, about 50 percent of U.S. roads are in poor or mediocre condition, but these are
mostly local and not eligible for federal funding. The physical condition of bridges improved
slightly over the past few years, but, as with all classes of assets, location matters. Figure 4.1
displays a snapshot of the percentage of structurally deficient bridges, by county, for the entire
United States in 2016. The darker areas on the map show counties that, for whatever reason,
are not keeping up with maintenance of their existing bridges. Among the 56,007 structurally
deficient bridges nationwide (out of a total of 614,387), 1,900 are on the Interstate Highway
System; more than 30,000 are in ten states, with almost 5,000 in Iowa alone, suggesting that
the problem may not be systemic (DOT, Federal Highway Administration, 2017a). In the con-
text of any proposed new federal spending on infrastructure, expectations of return on such
investments need to be tempered by realistic prospects of sustained maintenance at the local
level, hence the importance of life-cycle cost analysis.
Because what is “needed” is inherently subjective, a variety of approaches have been used
to ensure that published estimates are widely accepted as realistic and perceived to be objective.
A myriad of “needs” studies for transportation infrastructure are widely available in a variety of
formats. Many states have commissioned panels of experts who have considered state-provided
data to produce analytical reports that attempt to establish financial need for maintenance,
upgrading, operations, and expansion of transportation facilities. An example of this is the
widely cited Texas 2030 Transportation Needs Study, which was carried out by a panel of 12
highly respected independent experts appointed for the purpose by the Texas Transportation
Commission at the request of the governor (Texas 2030 Committee, 2009). New York State
commissioned an “outside research organization” to assess its needs, and the report has been
widely cited. The study, conducted by TRIP (The Road Information Program), established
that, despite ongoing spending, there was a growing unmet need for maintenance, upgrading,
and system expansion (TRIP, 2016). While TRIP describes itself as “a non-profit organization
that researches, evaluates and distributes economic and technical data on surface transpor-
tation issues,” the group chosen was financially supported by “insurance companies, equip-
ment manufacturers, distributors and suppliers; businesses involved in highway and transit
engineering and construction; labor unions; and organizations concerned with efficient
and safe surface transportation” (TRIP, 2016).
A dilemma inherent in all needs studies is that needs cannot be established objectively.
Experts familiar with transportation infrastructure are most qualified to assess needs, yet
experts also are likely to be advocates for improved infrastructure. The Texas panel of experts,
the nonprofit group that produced New York’s needs assessment, and the ASCE, which pub-
lishes the periodic Infrastructure Report Card, all represent deep knowledge of infrastructure
needs yet all are also ultimately advocates for improved infrastructure.
Figure 4.1
Disparities in Structurally Deficient Bridges Among Counties
Percent structurally deficient bridges

by county
0 20 40 60 80 100
SOURCE: Lu and Keating, 2017; based on data drawn from the National Bridge Inventory Database
(Nationalbridges.com, 2017). Used with permission.
RAND RR1739-4.1
Notwithstanding the inherent impossibility of defining needs objectively, federal

transportation infrastructure policy has evolved rather rapidly over the past decade from
overt self-serving “pork barrel politics” to a somewhat subjective but far more transparent
and data-driven assessment of needs based on the concept of “performance management”
(BPC, 2011). To comply with federal requirements and thus to maintain eligibility for fed-
eral funding, states must report on their performance using objective indicators of perfor-
mance, and they must estimate future needs that employ those indicators and estimates of
improvements that can be expected in transportation system performance if new resources
are expended to address their “needs,” which reflect shortfalls in state performance mea-
sures. Federal requirements dictate that states develop measures, collect data, and report
performance in seven areas (DOT, Federal Highway Administration, 2017c):
• Safety: To achieve a significant reduction in traffic fatalities and serious injuries on all
public roads.
• Infrastructure condition: To maintain the highway infrastructure asset system in a state
of good repair.
• Congestion reduction: To achieve a significant reduction in congestion on the National
Highway System.
• System reliability: To improve the efficiency of the surface transportation system.
• Freight movement and economic vitality: To improve the national freight network,
strengthen the ability of rural communities to access national and international trade
markets, and support regional economic development.
• Environmental sustainability: To enhance the performance of the transportation system
while protecting and enhancing the natural environment.
• Reduced project delivery delays: To reduce project costs, promote jobs and the econ-
omy, and expedite the movement of people and goods by accelerating project completion
through eliminating delays in the project development and delivery process, including
reducing regulatory burdens and improving agencies’ work practices.
Gradually, in response to federal requirements, states and MPOs are transitioning toward
needs assessments that explicitly measure current performance and state goals and objectives,
and quantify financing needs according to these federally specified criteria. There is an evolv-
ing federal “toolbox” of methods that facilitates the transition. While there is recognition that
needs cannot be defined using entirely objective data and methods, systematic analysis comple-
mented by public participation processes can lead to productive debates, the setting of priori-
ties by duly empowered bodies, and consensus on future actions.
Project Selection
The selection of projects at state, metropolitan, and local levels is, like the analysis of needs, an
inherently subjective action that, in a democracy, can be informed and influenced by techni-
cal and analytical processes. Most states empower representative bodies, such as transportation
commissions, and most metropolitan areas empower their MPOs, to select and prepare lists
of approved projects for implementation as funds become available. Serving on these com-
missions and boards are local elected officials and citizens appointed by the governor or other
senior public officials. The approved projects are enumerated in “transportation improvement
plans” (TIPs) that typically list approved projects for the coming five years, and the lists are
updated periodically. MPOs enact TIPs after debates, public testimony considering technical
analyses, and recommendations developed by career staff and technical consultants. Typically,
the deliberations ensure that a program of improvements emerges that is attentive to geo-
graphic distributions of benefits and costs to classes of beneficiaries (highway, transit, freight).
The deliberations reflect interactions between technical and political considerations.
Most transportation projects selected through such deliberative processes have been
assessed by staff or consultants using cost-benefit analysis (CBA) or an alternative assessment
process like CBA. Many states have adopted standardized software that is widely used for the
conduct of CBA.4 Typically, transportation projects are assessed by comparing a list of speci-
fied categories of benefits to estimated costs. The benefits usually include improvements in
safety, as measured by reductions in deaths, injuries and property damage; travelers’ time sav-
ings, enumerated in minutes and valued according to a specified value of time; travelers’ sav-
4 For example, California and Minnesota’s transportation CBA software are available online, including training manuals,
case studies, and guidebooks, and are widely employed in those states and also are employed by agencies that do not have
their own software packages (California Department of Transportation, no date; Minnesota Department of Transporta-
tion, no date).
ings due to changes in travel costs; and, often, environmental impacts, such as changes in air
pollutant emissions.
CBA requires that benefits be “monetized” by estimating dollar values of benefits that are
not usually measured in dollar terms. A large literature addresses such questions as the appro-
priate discount rates to employ in assessments of streams of transportation benefits and costs
over time, and how to assign monetary values to estimate nonmonetary benefits. While some
applications of CBA can be controversial,5 the tool nonetheless provides a common language
for debate and a means by which deliberative processes can move toward consensus.
After adopting projects and including them in regional or state TIPs, they move from
planning into preliminary engineering. Projects are subject to a wide variety of further evalu-
ations under federal and state law before they can be implemented. Among the further evalu-
ation requirements are environmental reviews under the National Environmental Protection
Act, certification that projects meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act,
and compliance with other appropriate environmental reviews, such as the Clean Water Act
for projects that impinge upon streams and rivers, and requirements of the Endangered Species
Act for projects that will affect habitats of listed or threatened species. Compliance with these
requirements can sometimes lead to reconsideration of previously approved projects.
Findings
Three critical path issues emerged from this review of surface transportation policy:
• failure to pivot from gas taxes to more sustainable funding sources

• barriers to priority setting
• a plethora of regulatory requirements at all levels of government.
As a nation, the United States continues to struggle with how to deal with its exist-
ing transportation assets and how to set priorities for both new investment and reinvestment
(via the market, public choice, or hybrid approaches). At the same time, the nation’s expecta-
tions of the features and benefits that highways, roads, bridges, transit, airports, and ports
should provide have changed dramatically over the past half century (e.g., resilience to disas-
ter, greenhouse gas emissions, equity). U.S. transportation networks are mature, but oppor-
tunities remain for advances in passenger rail and major innovations that take advantage of
and respond to the rapid changes in transportation technologies and business models that are
under way. The United States lacks processes to act on these changes. While some changes in
the past decade on the edges of federal policy have affected project selection and evaluation,
the United States still lacks systematic means of identifying projects of regional and national
significance and bringing to bear the considerable financial capacity of the federal government
to advance these projects.
5 Some oppose CBA on grounds that include the ultimate subjectivity of the choices of economic values, and because of
the propensity to “double count” benefits when, for example, air quality improvements result in increased property values.
Some controversial projects can be deliberated for years or even decades, and assumptions and data employed in CBA can
be the subject of ongoing debates and litigation.
CHAPTER FIVE
Federal Water Policy and Its Impact on Infrastructure Investment
In this chapter, we describe the federal policy landscape for development and operation of
water-related infrastructure, particularly the boundaries that have developed over time among
the federal government, regional and local governments, and private utilities. Water supply is
drawn from streams and rivers and pumped from aquifers, and can be stored in reservoirs and
lakes or underground. Replenishment from rain and snowmelt is vital. Water is used for many
purposes: drinking, agriculture, industrial processes, energy generation, and transportation.
To this list of “human” water uses must be added water for the environment and sustainment
of ecosystems. Ownership and operational responsibilities vary widely among different types
of facilities, such as ports and harbors; inland waterways; facilities built to provide surface and
groundwater, supplies such as diversions, pumps, pipelines, aqueducts, and reservoirs; hydro-
power turbines; water filtration, treatment, conveyance, and distribution to households, busi-
nesses, and industry; storm water storage and conveyance; and wastewater storage, conveyance,
and treatment.
Challenges of Building and Maintaining Water Infrastructure
River and groundwater basins typically span state boundaries. Consequently, actions related to
development and use of water by anyone can create spillover effects, or externalities on com-
munities and states downstream. The determinant of such interstate effects is not the size of
the infrastructure but rather the consequences for neighboring jurisdictions. For this reason,
water management requires a high level of cooperation across jurisdictions as a matter of prac-
tical necessity. This is the primary reason why the federal government has historically played a
prominent role in water resource development, flood control, and navigation. The situation is
reversed for the actual provision of drinking water and wastewater services, in which local gov-
ernment dominates and federal and state governments play the role of regulator and provider
of occasional financial assistance.
Aging Federal Water Resource Development Projects

Federal investment in water resource development has varied widely across regions, driven by
a political consensus around economic development needs. The questions now are how much
of this investment is past its prime and either should not be replaced or should be financed dif-
ferently going forward.
Improvement of navigable waters came first when Congress in 1824 authorized the
USACE, formally established in 1802, to improve navigation on the Ohio and Mississippi
57
rivers to advance economic development (USACE, no date).1 The USACE construction of

dams, ports, and flood works continued through the remainder of the 19th century and peaked
in the 1950s and 1960s. As shown in Figure 5.1, the USACE’s appropriations for construc-
tion trended downward between 1960 and 2012, with a sharp spike from the ARRA stimu-
lus. Spending on O&M rose gradually over this period, again with a spike from the ARRA
stimulus. With so many of the USACE’s assets constructed by the mid-20th century, it is not
surprising that the value of the USACE’s capital stock has been declining since around 1983,
as shown in Figure 5.2.
With the great western expansion of the nation’s boundaries, Congress established the
BOR in 1902 to bring irrigated agriculture and, with it, settlers to what was then called the
Great American Desert, west of the Mississippi River along the 100th meridian (National Park
Service, no date). Over time, as cities such as Denver, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City grew, BOR
irrigation projects began including more-substantial investments in municipal and industrial
water supply for those cities. In contrast, Congress never gave the USACE authority to assist in
constructing major infrastructure components of water supply systems in Boston, New York
City, Philadelphia, Chicago, or other major population centers on the eastern seaboard or cities
on the Great Lakes. These systems were considered strictly a local responsibility.
Both the USACE and the BOR are obliged to maintain aging assets while modifying
operating rules and structures to lessen the environmental damage that many of their facilities
have caused over the years. The decades-long process of changing the operations of the Glen
Figure 5.1
Trends in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Appropriations, 1960–2012
14
Civil works construction
12 Civil works O&M
10
Billions of dollars
0
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Year
SOURCE: National Research Council, 2013, Chapter 2: U.S. Federal Water Project Planning, Authorization, and
Appropriations.
RAND RR1739-5.1
1 In 1824, the Supreme Court ruled in Gibbons v. Ogden that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gave the federal
government authority over interstate commerce, including riverine navigation.
Federal Water Policy and Its Impact on Infrastructure Investment 59
Figure 5.2
Trends in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Capital Stock, 1928–2009
300
Flood
Net capital stock (billions of 2009 dollars)
Navigation
250
Multipurpose
Mississippi River and tributaries
200 Total
150
100
50
0
1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Year
SOURCE: National Research Council, Committee on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Water Resources Science,
Engineering, and Planning, 2011.
RAND RR1739-5.2
Canyon Dam on the Colorado River to restore aquatic habitat along the lower reaches of the
river is one of many examples. Some nonfederal dams in Oregon and elsewhere have even been
removed because they have outlived their useful lifetimes and otherwise disrupt natural sys-
tems (Wegner, 1990). To some extent, the water resource agencies’ missions in the 21st century
can be characterized as one of “reverse engineering” many of their major capital investments
of the 20th century.
With westward expansion no longer a national goal and the end of the era of major dam
building, the federal role in water resources has largely evolved from one of development to
environmental management. States generally have primacy in nearly all aspects of regulation.
However, given the interstate nature of our major river basins, such as the Colorado and Mis-
sissippi rivers, and aquifer systems, such as the Ogallala and Edwards, federal involvement in
some form remains relevant.
The United States has a rich and storied past when it comes to interstate and more-
localized disputes over water use (Reisner, 1986). Allocation of water from the Alabama-Coosa-
Tallapoosa and the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basins has led to a major con-
flict among Alabama, Florida, and Georgia (Southern Environmental Law Center, 2015). In
northern California, conflicts among farmers, urban water users, and water needs to support
endangered species have persisted for several decades (Baker, Sampson, and Harwood, 2013).
These examples reinforce the point that repairing or building new water-related infrastructure
is rarely as easy as “cutting red tape” or authorizing large sums of money. Legitimate differ-
ences in priorities often exist within regions and between states that inhibit new investment or
rehabilitation of existing facilities.
Chronic Issues in Procurement and Pricing of Water Services

Local governments pay for over 95 percent of drinking water, sewer, and storm water infra-
structure, with the states making up most of the difference. Local governments also invest
in “source protection,” by acquiring lands and easements in the areas upstream of reservoirs
or above groundwater sources (Soll, 2013). Funding is typically secured through municipal
bonds, and households and businesses are charged fees for actual water usage in the case of
water supply facilities. Sewerage fees are also charged on the basis of usage. Storm water man-
agement is typically funded through property assessments and other taxes related to property
value and extent.
For the same reasons that user fees or their equivalent are essential for maintenance of
transportation facilities, proper pricing of water services is critical to the sustainability of water
utilities. Yet, full-cost pricing, in which life-cycle costs are reflected in the prices charged to
customers, is not practiced in many places throughout the United States, causing them to fall
behind in maintenance (Kane, 2016; also see Ellis, 2017). While utilities should make pro-
visions for households who cannot afford basic water services, the system as a whole cannot
afford to run in the red and defer maintenance and repairs. As an example of how more-
appropriate pricing can make a difference, Chicago doubled its water rates between 2010 and
2015 to enable it to speed up replacement of aging pipes; water in Chicago as of June 2017 costs
$3.88 per 1,000 gallons, less than a half a penny per gallon (City of Chicago, 2017; Circle of
Blue, 2015). For comparison, a gallon of bottled water cost about $2.10 in 2017—more than
500 times the cost of water at the tap. The average monthly water bill for a family of four in
major U.S. cities ranges between $25 and $150.
Many older water systems experience water losses because of persistent leaks; they also
lose revenue in the process. Leaks and pipe breaks in combined storm and wastewater systems
can lead to higher inflows and infiltration and thus more water requiring treatment before its
discharge to rivers. Poor controls on flows, whether of treated water or untreated wastewater,
can lead to higher volumes flowing into treatment plants, and consequently higher operating
costs (Fischbach et al., 2017).
The federal government felt an obligation at the time of passage of the Clean Water Act
of 1972, and many years after the passage of the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, to provide
support to communities as they sought to comply with the federal regulations. The federal gov-
ernment’s most prominent role is in regulating the quality of streams, rivers, and other water
bodies receiving treated and untreated wastewater and storm water and in regulating drinking
water quality for the purposes of protecting human health and aquatic ecosystems. The goal of
the Clean Water Act is often expressed in the vernacular as intended to make all waters of the
United States “fishable and swimmable.”
The question of the appropriate role of the federal government in helping disadvantaged
communities modernize their drinking water infrastructure came to the fore with the unfor-
tunate case of Flint, Michigan. The pathway to excessive levels of lead in Flint’s drinking water
is complicated. The city of Flint, whose population declined from 144,500 in 1990 to 102,000
in 2016 (Suburban Stats, 2017), had been drawing water from Lake Huron through Detroit’s
debt-ridden public water utility, the Water and Sewerage Department. Since the early 1990s,
Detroit has generally maintained its lead levels in compliance with federal standards. In 2013,
Detroit canceled its arrangement with Flint after Flint’s city council voted to switch to a new
pipeline from Lake Huron. In April 2014, Flint began drawing its water instead from the Flint
River as an interim measure until the new pipeline was constructed. Michigan’s Department
of Environmental Quality chose not to require Flint to adopt procedures for corrosion control,
as recommended by the EPA. Many old service lines (those leading from the city’s system into
homes) in Flint contain lead. Corrosive water in contact with lead pipes substantially increased
the concentration of lead in drinking water—orders of magnitude greater than the acceptable
federal guideline.2
Residents of Flint, as in many lower-income and rural communities, face prohibitive costs
of replacing aging service lines running into their homes and the pipes within homes. Flint’s
particular difficulties are compounded by its shrinking population and high water rates relative
to peer communities, a consequence of poor management decisions made in the past (State of
Michigan, Department of Treasury, 2016). The Service Line Removal Collaborative, founded
by the Environmental Defense Fund, Clean Water Action, the American Water Works Asso-
ciation, and many other water associations and nongovernmental organizations, has been
taking actions to increase the rate of voluntary action at the community level (Lead Service
Line Removal Collaborative, no date). Other options, such as corrosion control or other infra-
structure investments, also need to be considered. Water utilities have limited authority and
resources to take on this issue themselves, as recently demonstrated in Pittsburgh (May, Fisch-
bach, and Abbott, 2017).
Water Infrastructure as an Integrated System

The field of water resource management has undergone a major transformation since the time
most federal water-related programs were put in place. Separate, stovepiped local and state
departments for water supply, wastewater, water quality, flood control, ecosystem restoration,
and resilience to natural disasters make little sense when planning, investing, and operating
water infrastructure. These issues are clearly intertwined, and separate investment strategies are
costly and potentially counterproductive. With the addition of stakeholder engagement and
attention to governance issues, the preferred approach is called integrated water resource man-
agement (Lenton and Muller, 2009). For example, a barrier to protect densely populated areas
from coastal storm surge has the potential to degrade water quality and ecosystem resources if
not designed and operated with these concerns in mind. This development parallels the similar
movement toward intermodal transportation planning identified in Chapter Three.
Even though integrated water resource management is widely accepted among water pro-
fessionals in the United States and throughout the world, actual implementation has been slow.
Federal programs for water resources remain fragmented. At the local and state levels, man-
agement of water supply, wastewater, and storm water infrastructure generally remain under
separate governance structures.
2 One narrative places the blame on lax regulation by Michigan’s governor and his Department of Environmental Quality
for knowingly turning a blind eye toward the corrosion problem, abetted by the federal EPA. Another narrative points to the
old lead pipes in Flint as another of many signs of America’s neglect of aging urban infrastructure. A third narrative points
to incompetence of city leaders in managing what was intended to be a transition strategy to a different means of supplying
water from their same old source of Lake Huron water—and avoiding further dealings with the struggling Detroit system.
Still another narrative casts Flint’s tragedy as a sign of a larger trend of differential treatment toward the most vulnerable of
residents in urban areas. Finally, another narrative places Flint’s water problem in a broader frame of residual environmental
risk decades after the United States passed its landmark environmental protection laws that were intended to protect the
public, particularly infants and children, from all sorts of harms, including lead in drinking water or paint chips in homes.
All of these narratives have some validity with respect to Flint.
Relevant Features of Federal Policies and Programs
Although direct federal involvement in water infrastructure has been shrinking relative to local
and state expenditures, federal involvement in spending, regulation, and tax policy exerts an
outsized influence on local public- and private-sector investment patterns. In FY 2016, federal
funding for water infrastructure was provided largely by six U.S. departments/agencies:3
• Department of Agriculture (Natural Resources Conservation Service and Rural Utility

Service)
• Department of Commerce (Economic Development Agency)
• Department of Defense (USACE, Civil Works Directorate)
• Department of Housing and Urban Development (Community Development Block
Grants)
• Department of the Interior (BOR)
• EPA.
Coordination of budget and policy among these programs is the responsibility of OMB.
Given the dispersion of these programs and the complexity of congressional oversight over
them, the reality is that water infrastructure policy and investment are not often well aligned
across the federal government.
Water Resource Development and Navigable Waters

Distinct from wastewater and drinking water systems, water resource infrastructure includes
dams, levees, harbors, canals, and the locks and dredged channels of navigable waterways.
Capital spending for federal water resource programs has been in decline for decades. Most of
the nation’s desirable sites for hydropower have been developed or otherwise been foreclosed
from development and the need for “reclaiming” arid lands in the West has diminished. In
the South, Northeast, and Pacific Northwest, the USACE was the primary builder of dams
and levees, but the USACE now spends most of its budget on dredging and ecosystem mainte-
nance/restoration (National Research Council, Committee on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Water Resources Science, Engineering, and Planning, National Academies Press, 2011). The
share of the USACE’s budget dedicated to O&M has been increasing every year and now
exceeds spending on capital improvements. One of the most concerning issues on the USACE’s
agenda is dam safety, with so many of the dams built in the mid-20th century nearing or sur-
passing their planned lifetimes.
Federal support for navigation, coastal protection, flood control, and ecosystem restora-
tion is highly variable in terms of cost-sharing arrangements with state and local governments
(Rubin, 1983). The variability in cost-sharing across the different business lines reflects chang-
ing perspectives in Congress about the national and regional priorities over the 20th century.
Table 5.1 summarizes these cost-sharing arrangements as of 2016. In FY 2010, about 32 per-
cent of the USACE’s budget was allocated to navigation improvements, 34 percent to flood risk
management, nearly 17 percent to environmental restoration, and the remaining 17 percent to
3 Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution, known as the Commerce Clause, is the primary rationale for federal
involvement in navigable waters of the United States, leading to national investment in navigation improvements, harbor
dredging, flood control, water supply (in some regions), and eventually regulation of discharges of wastewater and chemical
pollutants.
Table 5.1
Federal Cost-Sharing for Capital and O&M by Type of Water Infrastructure
Maximum Federal Share of Maximum Federal Share of

Project Purpose Construction (%) O&M (%)
Navigation
Coastal ports
<20 ft. harbor 80a 100 b
20–50 ft. harbor 65a 100
>50 ft. harbor 40a 50
Inland waterways 100 c 100
Flood and hurricane damage reduction
Inland flood control 65 0
Coastal hurricane and storm damage reduction 65 0
Except periodic beach renourishment 50 0
Aquatic ecosystem restoration 65 0
Multipurpose project components
Hydroelectric power 0d 0
Municipal and industrial water supply storage 0 0
Agricultural water supply storage 65e 0
Recreation at corps facilities 50 0
Aquatic plant control Not applicable 50
SOURCE: Carter and Stern, 2017, Table 2, p. 14, drawing on 33 U.S.C. 2211–2215.
a Percentages reflect that nonfederal sponsors pay 10, 25, or 50 percent during construction and 10 percent
over a period not to exceed 30 years.
b Appropriations from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, which is funded by collections on commercial
cargo imports at federally maintained ports, are used for 100 percent of these costs.
c Appropriations from the Inland Waterway Trust Fund, which is funded by a fuel tax on vessels engaged in
commercial transport on designated waterways, are used for 50 percent of these costs.
d Capital costs initially are federally funded and are repaid by fees collected from power customers.
e For the 17 western states where reclamation law applies, irrigation costs initially are federally funded, then
repaid by nonfederal water users.
hydropower, recreation, water supply, emergency management, and administration (National

Research Council, Committee on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Water Resources Science,
Engineering, and Planning, National Academies Press, 2011).
Even with state or local cost-sharing, the USACE and BOR programs have a long his-
tory of subsidizing municipal and agricultural water users, particularly in the western United
States. Environmentalists and fiscal conservatives have criticized these programs for not requir-
ing full-cost pricing of water and, along with various crop subsidy programs through the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, encouraging overconsumption of water supplies (Lustgarten and
Sadasivam, 2015; Reisner, 1986).
Capital investment through the USACE process is remarkably inefficient, due to the
unique role of Congress in involving itself in project-level funding decisions. It takes at least
four acts of Congress before a single USACE capital project can be constructed. Congress
must first authorize a study, then fund the study through appropriations, authorize construc-
tion following completion of the feasibility study and a recommendation to construct from the
Chief of Engineers, and, finally, authorize appropriations to fund construction. This dysfunc-
tional approval process can take decades, and it has created a vast backlog of projects that will
never—and likely, should never—be built.
In recent years, the USACE has made improvements in how it plans, prioritizes, and bud-
gets its work. It also plays an active role in ecosystem restoration as part of resilience strategies
led primarily by local and state governments, such as in New York City following Hurricane
Sandy (Sanderson et al., 2016) and the Louisiana coast following Hurricane Katrina (Coastal
Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana, no date).
Economists and others have suggested that water markets and trading, now in limited use
in the western United States, could lead to more efficient pricing and hence allocation of water
from federal water projects, but, thus far, the idea has not taken hold because of significant
technical, institutional, and political impediments (Howitt and Hansen, 2005; Raffensberger
and Milke, 2017, Chapter 13).
Wastewater Infrastructure
For the past 45 years, the largest federal expenditures on water overall have been through the
EPA. The 1972 Clean Water Act authorized substantially more federal financial assistance for
municipal wastewater treatment plant construction than had been the case in the 1950s and
60s, and the law significantly expanded and tightened regulations to reduce pollution in navi-
gable waters. To compensate for the underspending by state and local governments, Congress
in 1972 raised the share of federal spending from 55 to 75 percent of the costs of secondary
treatment of wastewater in response to widespread pollution of the nation’s streams and rivers,
with state and local governments picking up the other 25 percent (Copeland, 2012). Funding
was allocated to the states according to a formula based on population and need, as determined
by an EPA survey, and states set their own priorities. Historically, wastewater treatment has
not been a particularly attractive investment opportunity for the private sector, in part because
of the availability of extensive federal funding beginning in the 1950s and extending into the
1980s (National Research Council, 2002). The federal share was later reduced to 55 percent
in 1981.
The most recent major amendment to the Clean Water Act was the Water Quality Act
of 1987 (Pub L. 100-4), which authorized a wide variety of appropriations related to water
and pollution, including the phase-out of grants and an initial infusion of $8.4 billion for
CWSRFs for sewage treatment infrastructure, discussed in Chapter Three (Weinraub, 1987).
Both grants and loans were set to expire by the early 1990s. However, even in the face of major
budget deficits and a growing federal debt, Congress has found it difficult to wean states and
local agencies off of federal support and has consequently continued to appropriate funds for
the SRFs to this day (Copeland, 2014b). At the same time, some SRFs have built up large bal-
ances of unobligated funds, leading to questions about the extent of need for federal funding
(GAO, 2015). The need for federal subsidies is further called into question in the absence of
a requirement that utilities employ full-cost pricing to account for life-cycle costs and pay for
upgrades and repairs.
Drinking Water Infrastructure

Ninety percent of investment in drinking water infrastructure is made at the local level through
the use of municipal revenue bonds. The federal Safe Drinking Water Act regulates the qual-
ity of drinking water at the tap for more than 152,000 public water systems in the United
States. Ninety-seven percent of these public water systems serve communities of 10,000 or
fewer people, but, in total, they serve about 21 percent of the U.S. population (EPA, Office of
Research and Development, 2016). About 12 percent of the U.S. population is served by pri-
vately owned water systems (Kopaskie, 2016).
The EPA has set standards for more than 90 contaminants, including lead; states are free
to set more-stringent standards. Meeting these standards can be costly and technically diffi-
cult, particularly for the smaller rural systems serving fewer than 10,000 people. Populations
in these small communities are typically dispersed, requiring more pipe “miles per customer”
than larger systems and making consolidation of these smaller systems into more financially
viable utilities difficult in places (American Water Works Association, 2012, p. 12). Congress
authorized a state revolving loan program in 1996 to assist water utilities in their compliance
with federal drinking water regulations (EPA, no date-a). Before that time, the federal gov-
ernment largely stayed out of funding or financing drinking water facilities, in contrast to its
involvement in wastewater treatment.
Conditions and Needs Assessments
A needs assessment is the first part of estimating the gap between the spending that is thought
to be needed and actual spending. The arithmetic is simple— GAP = NEEDS – SPENDING—but
is often complicated by a number of methodological issues (Copeland and Tiemann, 2010).
The bottom line of the ASCE report card on U.S. infrastructure and other infrastructure
assessments is the large gap between the infrastructure America has today and the infrastruc-
ture America “should” have. In 2013, ASCE estimated a need for $1 trillion in capital spending
for drinking water infrastructure over the next 25 years and $298 billion spending for waste-
water infrastructure over the next 20 years (ASCE, 2013a). On an annual basis, these needs
estimates translate to about $55 billion in capital spending for drinking water and wastewater
infrastructure. Other recent needs assessments range from $11.25 billion to $40 billion per
year (in 2011 dollars) for drinking water infrastructure (EPA, 2013a; American Water Works
Association, 2012). Estimates of wastewater capital costs come in at around $12.7 billion per
year (2011 dollars) (Copeland, 2012). For comparison, in 2014, CBO estimated public capital
spending on drinking water and wastewater infrastructure to be $34 billion and O&M spend-
ing to be $72 billion.
The size of the gap depends on assumptions about replacement rates of pipes and facilities.
Some costs in needs assessments are based on varying standards of repair frequency, includ-
ing factors such as population growth and age of the system. Assumptions about construction
costs, including the price of energy, also influence the numbers. Assessments also differ by the
method used to generate the estimates. For example, the EPA’s Drinking Water Infrastruc-
ture Needs Survey and Assessment uses survey data to collect information on self-reported
costs of planned future projects (EPA, 2011). Systems that do not appropriately price their
services—and are consequently undermaintained—are implicitly given greater weight in these
assessments than systems that employ full-cost pricing to cover their routine maintenance and
system upgrades. Further, needs assessments do not account for whether users are willing to
pay for higher levels of maintenance or investment.
Because of these and other issues, national-level needs assessments can provide some indi-
cation of order of magnitude needs, but they cannot reliably guide levels of investment or
individual investment decisions. A 2002 CBO study found the average annual gap between
current spending (1999 at the time of the study) and projected needs between 2000 and 2019
for its low-cost (and preferred) scenario to be $0 for water supply and $3.2 billion for waste-
water systems, an increase of 14 percent above 1999 spending levels; its high estimates came
in at 90 percent above 1999 spending (CBO, 2002; Copeland and Tiemann, 2010). CBO
was more confident about the validity of its low-cost scenario. As CBO noted at the time, the
“result contradicts conventional wisdom that the nation’s water systems will soon be straining
to fund a large increase in investment.” A 2010 Congressional Research Service study reviewed
the 2002 CBO study, noting that a future investment gap was not inevitable as long as water
and wastewater utilities ramped up their revenues to cover maintenance and replacement costs.
Example: Drinking Water Infrastructure

To drive home the limited use of needs assessments, we examined the varying estimates of
drinking water infrastructure needs. Figure 5.3 compares multiple needs assessments covering
roughly the same time period, illustrating the problem of using these widely varying assess-
ments as a guide for setting policy and priorities. In its latest report to Congress in 2013, the
EPA found that the “nation’s drinking water utilities need $384.2 billion in infrastructure
investments over the next 20 years” (EPA, 2013, p. i). The EPA only surveys projects eligible for
DWSRF funding. The report also compared this estimate to prior EPA estimates and estimates
from other organizations and found widely varying results.4 The EPA’s own estimates jumped
from $227 billion over 20 years in 1999 to $376 billion over 20 years in 2003 by “better captur-
Figure 5.3
Comparison of Needs Assessments for Water Utility Infrastructure
$331 to $572
CBO estimate
$231 to $670
EPA ‘02 gap analysis
$225 $227 $380 $570 $700 $816
$376 $384
EPA ‘95 EPA ‘03, ‘07, WIN estimate WIN estimate AWWA
and ’99 and ’11 (CBO variant) (as published) assessment
assessments assessments
200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1,000

Billions of January 2011 dollars
SOURCES: EPA, 2013; American Water Works Association, 2012.

NOTE: WIN = Water Infrastructure Network; AWWA = American Water Works Association.
RAND RR1739-5.3
4 All EPA estimates are in 2011 dollars for comparison purposes.

ing previously underreported longer term needs for infrastructure rehabilitation and replacement”
(EPA, 2013, p. 3).
There is considerable uncertainty behind these point estimates. A 2002 CBO study esti-
mated $331.2 to $571.7 billion in investment needed for drinking water systems over the same
20-year period as the 2003 EPA assessment, not including significantly larger O&M costs
(CBO, 2002). In its own 2002 study, EPA reported a wider range, estimating the cost of capi-
tal investments in drinking water systems for 2000–2019 would range from $231 billion to
$670 billion (EPA, 2002). CBO found that critical assumptions drove differences in estimates
of water infrastructure costs over time: replacement rate for drinking water pipes, the cost
savings associated with improved efficiency, the costs of controlling overflow caused by heavy
rainfall events for systems that combine storm water with household and industrial water, and
the repayment period of any borrowed funds. In contrast, under different assumptions about
replacement rates and expansion needs driven by growth, the American Water Works Associa-
tion estimated $1.02 trillion would be needed to cover investments in water mains over the 25
years from 2011 to 2035 (American Water Works Association, 2012), which for comparability
to other estimates is an average of $816 billion over 20 years.5 Similarly, a report by the Water
Infrastructure Network (WIN) (WIN, 2002) estimated the cost of drinking water infrastruc-
ture built in 2000–2019 at $700 billion.
One reason for the discrepancy between government and interest group estimates is that
WIN’s $700 billion estimate includes principal and interest costs paid on debt after 2019 but
does not include principal and interest paid during 2000–2019 on pre-2000 capital invest-
ments. The CBO estimates follow the opposite approach, including borrowing costs on earlier
projects paid during 2000–2019, but not considering principal and interest paid after 2019.
This makes comparison difficult. CBO estimated that if WIN had used the CBO approach to
counting principal and interest payments, the WIN estimate would be $570 billion. Further,
the estimates in Figure 5.3 do not include O&M costs. Adding in O&M costs, WIN estimates
“the cost of building, operating, and maintaining needed drinking water and wastewater facili-
ties over [2000–2019] approaches $2 trillion” in 1999 real dollars.
In sum, the wide range of estimates produced from inconsistent assessment methods
yields little information or guidance to decisionmakers on how they should decide how much
to spend on capital versus O&M for drinking water infrastructure, and where to spend it. The
assessments do, however, suggest the order of magnitude of potential funding needed over
some future time period. Needs assessments directed toward policymakers also tend to miss
the potential for market responses to real needs. For example, water industry analysts projected
in 2016 that spending in the water and wastewater utility sector alone will exceed $532 billion
over the next ten years, a 28 percent increase over the previous decade (Nabers, 2016).
5 According to the American Water Works Association (2012, p. 9):

Many utilities will have pipes that last much longer than these values suggest while others will have pipes that begin to fail
sooner. However, these values have been validated as national “averages” by comparing them to actual field experience in
a number of utilities throughout the country. The model also includes estimates of the indicative costs to replace each size
category of pipe, as well as the cost to repair the projected number of pipe breaks over time according to pipe size.
Project Selection
Public officials make decisions about capital and O&M spending on infrastructure, typically
within the structure of an annual budget process in which long-term perspectives on invest-
ment are difficult to communicate. Within a single level of government and among different
levels of government, coordination of project development, design, and implementation is dif-
ficult, particularly for projects that cut across jurisdictional and sectoral lines. This is a problem
of governance.
Federal Processes
Clear national criteria for priority setting are lacking but exist implicitly for the various infra-
structure types. Since the passage of the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, water
quality regulations have indirectly set investment priorities for states, local governments, and
private system operators. For USACE and BOR projects, the strength of congressional delega-
tions from individual states has often driven funding priorities; in the case of smaller-scale
water projects with the USACE, the availability of a willing and able local partner has some-
times driven funding priorities.
Dating back to the 1930s, the federal government has used some form of CBA to evaluate
individual water resource, navigation, coastal protection, flood control, and ecosystem resto-
ration projects. Principles, Requirements and Guidelines for Water and Land Related Resources
Implementation Studies (PR&G), a document maintained by the Council on Environmen-
tal Quality, establishes principles and evaluation criteria to guide federal water investments
(Council on Environmental Quality, 2014). Finalized in December 2014, this represented a
substantial update to the previous Principles and Guidelines established in 1983. However,
there remains room for improvement, particularly when it comes to life-cycle cost analysis,
pricing of services delivered by the project, and factoring in future performance under a wide
range of uncertain future conditions (e.g., climate change, technological innovation, demo-
graphic shifts).
For the very few capital projects still being developed by the USACE and the BOR, proj-
ect selection continues to be done by Congress, with analysis carried out by the agencies and
oversight conducted by OMB. However, congressional approval and funding processes for the
USACE are sclerotic, as evidenced by the large backlog of authorized projects awaiting appro-
priation and the growing maintenance backlog (National Research Council, Committee on
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Water Resources Science, Engineering, and Planning, National
Academies Press, 2011, pp. 2–3). A 25-year wait for funding a congressionally authorized proj-
ect is not uncommon. O&M priorities are largely set by the agencies themselves, with occa-
sional interventions by Congress.
The USACE has vital river-basin scale and other interstate navigation, hydropower, and
flood control infrastructure to maintain and protect, and its budget should be commensurate
with those responsibilities. However, as a 2011 National Research Council study committee
noted, “The modern context for water resources management involves smaller budgets, cost
sharing, an expanded range of objectives, and inclusion of more public and private stakehold-
ers in management decisions” (National Research Council, Committee on U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers Water Resources Science, Engineering, and Planning, National Academies Press,
2011, pp. 2–3). The National Research Council committee went on to note two implications
of these changing conditions: “more flexible, innovative, and lower cost solutions to achieving
water-related objectives” and the necessity of the USACE working “in settings with more col-
laboration and public and private partnerships than in the past” (National Research Council,
Committee on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Water Resources Science, Engineering, and
Planning, National Academies Press, 2011, pp. 2–3).
With the exception of investments to support national parks, military installations, and
other federal facilities, the federal government does not involve itself in direct selection of water
or wastewater infrastructure projects, but the federal government influences project selection
indirectly through regulatory actions (e.g., court orders to force local or state action on a storm
water or wastewater facility as a consequence of violations of the Clean Water Act), its capi-
talization and rules governing SRFs, and its provision of tax-exempt financing, discussed in
Chapter Three.
State and Local Processes

State and local governments face two large questions: how much money to spend on water
infrastructure relative to other public needs, and which specific capital and O&M projects
should get priority. The availability of financing and cost-sharing programs through the
USACE, EPA, and, to a lesser extent, the BOR can complicate—and distort—state and local
governments’ decisionmaking, particularly when capital funding, but not O&M funding, may
be available. If not operating under regulatory constraints by the EPA, local governments gen-
erally set priorities that are responsive to demands from their residents and businesses and can
be sustained through fees and taxes.
State and local governments also need a way to assess whether individual projects are
consistent with long-term goals and complementary to related projects. Evaluating individual
projects is the easier problem. Public and private water utilities generally follow standard pro-
cedures of engineering economics to evaluate projects. Integrated, regional-scale projects are
more difficult. The calculus requires sophisticated analysis, not always available or affordable
to most local governments. In reality, this kind of system-level thinking is the exception rather
than the rule at the state and local levels (Neuman and Whittington, 2000).
Findings
Federal water resource programs have been on the decline for decades, as national needs have
been met, in the case of major hydropower development, or shifted, in the case of reclamation of
arid western lands. Now, the focus is on flood risk reduction, navigation improvements, safety
of aging dams, and the restoration of aquatic ecosystems that deteriorated as a consequence
of the earlier water resource development projects that dammed major rivers throughout the
country. With the exception of port and harbor improvements, there is no market mechanism
for financing these types of public works. Federal funding of water resources remains frag-
mented through multiple agency programs, none of which adequately reflect the underused
wisdom of integrated water resource management. Congress and federal agencies have yet to
systematically confront decisions about which of the aging water resource infrastructure to
continue to maintain, which to overhaul to adapt to a changing climate and concerns about
resilience to natural and manmade disasters, and which to dismantle.
The situation is wholly different for water utilities, for which 90 percent of investment
happens at the local level, largely through the use of municipal revenue bonds and property
assessments. Federal water quality and drinking water laws and regulations drove much of
this investment in past decades, with the EPA as the dominant funder. An unintended conse-
quence of the regulatory regimes in place has been the differential financial burden placed on
communities of different sizes and economic trajectories. Once-thriving industrial cities with
extensive water infrastructure are now faced with the consequences of deferred maintenance
of aging systems. With declining populations and tax bases and a reluctance to raise water
rates, these cities lack the financial means to fix their systems. The more prosperous cities and
regions, by and large, are doing better at maintaining water utilities, as evidenced by their
willingness to rely on full-cost pricing, and their consequent high bond issuance rates, bond
ratings, and well-functioning systems.
CHAPTER SIX
Policy Options
The previous chapters show that the calculus of infrastructure investment and its maintenance
is complicated and set within a diverse and multilayered system of government and taxation. In
a rapidly changing, innovation-driven economy, the public benefits of providing infrastructure
services vary from place to place and from one type of infrastructure to another. Communities
have vastly different needs: Urban needs differ from rural; older cities’ needs differ from newer
cities’; coastal regions’ needs differ from those in inland river basins and the intermountain
west.
There is not a single switch to flip that will make the diverse collection of issues that con-
tribute to the nation’s infrastructure needs disappear. Whether through grants or tax credits,
massive infusions of federal spending to repair or build anew without a focus on long-term pri-
orities and differential needs may do some good by virtue of stimulating demand for construc-
tion services, but money alone will not fix what is broken in our approach to public works—
and not everything is broken.
In this chapter, we first propose criteria with which to compare and contrast policy
options. We then review recent federal and state initiatives intended to advance these criteria
and increase investment. Finally, we consider other ideas proposed by the Trump Adminis-
tration, members of Congress, and other organizations and commentators. Our focus is on
national-level policy, but we note areas where changes in state policies could point the way to
larger-scale reforms or have beneficial effects.
Desirable Characteristics of Infrastructure Policy
Neither Congress nor the Executive Branch has articulated a national infrastructure policy
or the desirable attributes of such a policy. This is not impossible to do. A report published in
2006, known as the Eddington Report, is an example of such a long-term vision and policy
statement (Eddington, 2006). While originating in the UK, the report is directed to a wider
global audience. Its focus is on transportation, but the report is applicable to other public infra-
structure policy. Among other purposes, the report identifies a series of principles that should
“guide the development of transport policies to support sustainable development of the UK
economy over the next 15 to 30 years” (Eddington, 2006, p. 41). The four key principles in the
Eddington report are worth noting verbatim (Eddington, 2006, p. 43):
• Start with a clear articulation of the policy objectives and the transport outcomes
required to deliver these objectives, focusing where relevant on the ‘whole journey’
rather than particular stages or modes in a journey;
71
• Consider the full range of policy options for meeting the policy objectives, including
different modal options, and policies for making more efficient use of existing capac-
ity as well as small and larger scale capacity enhancements and packages of policy
measures;
• Prioritise limited public resources on those policies which most cost-effectively deliver
Government’s objectives, taking account of the full social, environmental and eco-
nomic costs and benefits of policy options; and
• Ensure the evidence base can support this process, providing information on the
needs of users, current and anticipated use and performance of the network, support-
ing option generation through modelling and appraisal of options, and evaluating
impacts to inform future decision making.
Drawing on the Eddington Report principles, we suggest similar principles in a U.S. con-
text, drawing on the fragments of existing policy and practice applicable to transportation and
water infrastructure. Principles of a national policy for the United States could look something
like the following:
1. Articulate national priorities and target funding to those investments that reflect pri-
orities, such as increasing economic efficiency and productivity in specific sectors or
regions; reduce risks by mitigating vulnerabilities and building resilience to natural
disasters and effects of a changing climate; reduce or eliminate traffic fatalities; and
eliminate waterborne contamination and illness.
2. Support states, local governments, and regional bodies in continuing to lead in the
planning, selection, and provision of intrastate infrastructure by whatever funding and
financing mechanisms they choose but encouraging standardization of policies to enable
institutional investors and private equity to more actively participate in these markets.
3. Promote the federal role of inducing and encouraging investment in multijurisdictional
programs, such as those that serve intercity travel and freight transport and those that
address river basins and large watersheds that cross state lines.
4. Coordinate, leverage, and consolidate federal investments coming through different
agencies and programs, by using federal incentives to move state and local government
partners beyond looking at local project impacts in isolation.
5. Incentivize innovation and energy and water efficiency in the conceptualization, design,
construction, operation, and maintenance of new infrastructure and upgrades to exist-
ing infrastructure.
6. Support and coordinate consistent and transparent evaluation criteria related to net
benefits, life-cycle cost analysis, performance metrics, and return on investment.
7. Support R&D and dissemination and guidance as to how to execute the above prin-
ciples.
The first principle speaks not only to direct investment but also to the implicit responsi-
bility at the federal level to promote and enforce regulations aimed at protecting public health,
safety, and the environment. Taken as a whole, these principles could guide the fixing of cur-
rent policies and practices that are inhibiting long-term planning and productive investment,
particularly with regard to maintenance; increase national benefits of infrastructure invest-
ment through more-targeted spending; and make the federal government a better partner to
state and local governments—and the private sector—as they seek to improve public assets.
Policy Options 73
Recent Initiatives by the Federal Government
Over the past 30 years or so, Congress and the Executive Branch have made vital changes in
federal transportation and water policy that point in the direction of the above principles, but
only a few have received public attention. Here, we highlight notable changes that were made
by the end of December 2016.
Targeting National Priorities

The last several transportation and water bills that Congress passed included a partial list of
national goals related to traffic safety and movement of freight with respect to transportation
policy,1 and disaster resilience, drought, and coastal protection with respect to water poli-
cy.2 These represented incremental steps toward a more comprehensive view of national goals
and priorities for infrastructure investment (DOT, no date). In addition to these laws, former
President Barack Obama made use of executive orders to further goals related to adaptation
to climate change, energy efficiency, and resilience.3 In early 2017, President Trump rescinded
Executive Order 13690, which required federally funded projects to meet more stringent flood
risk reduction standards, as well as others related directly to regulatory processes.4
National priorities can also be expressed through federal grant programs. Project-based
grants have the ability to more effectively target federal resources to the most critical needs
from a national perspective. They can demand certain conditions of project submissions, such
as requiring cost-share or leveraging with nonfederal resources. One of the more popular com-
petitive infrastructure grant programs has been DOT’s Transportation Investment Generating
Economic Recovery (TIGER) program. An outgrowth of the 2009 ARRA, TIGER is a sup-
plemental discretionary grant program that allows DOT to use a merit-based process to select
projects with exceptional benefits. Funding provided through ARRA in 2009 was $1.5 bil-
lion. Congress has continued funding the program each year since, though at reduced levels
(between $474 and $600 million during FYs 2010 through 2016).
With Congress having dedicated nearly $5.1 billion over eight rounds of funding, DOT
reports that TIGER projects have historically achieved, on average, co-investment of 3.5 dol-
lars (including other federal, state, local, private and philanthropic funds) for every TIGER
dollar invested (DOT, 2017c). The popularity of the program with grantees, either because
of its genuine appeal or because of the absence of alternatives, is evidenced by extraordinary
1 Public Law 114-94, Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, December 4, 2015; Public Law 102-240,
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), December 18, 1991; Public Law 112-141, Moving
Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), July 6, 2012; Public Law 109-59, Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Effi-
cient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), August 10, 2005.
2 Public Law 113-121, Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014, June 20, 2014.
3 The White House, Executive Order 13604 (Improving Performance of Federal Permitting and Review of Infrastructure
Projects), Executive Order 13653 (Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change), Executive Order 13677
(Climate-Resilient International Development), Executive Order 13690 (Establishing a Federal Flood Risk Standard and a Pro-
cess for Further Soliciting and Considering Stakeholder Input), Executive Order 13693 (Planning for Federal Sustainability in
the Next Decade), Executive Order 13717 (Establishing a Federal Earthquake Risk Management Standard), Executive Order
13728 (Wildland-Urban Interface Federal Risk Mitigation), Executive Order 13754 (Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience).
4 The White House, Executive Order 13777 (Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda), Executive Order 13783 (Promoting
Energy Independence and Economic Growth). In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, the Trump Administration is reported to be
reconsidering its rescission of Executive Order 13653 (Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change).
demand that far exceeds available resources. For the FY 2016 round ($500 million available),
DOT received 585 eligible applications collectively requesting more than $9.3 billion in fund-
ing. Despite strong demand and the ability to attract significant leveraged funds, Congress did
not permanently authorize the TIGER program in the recent long-term reauthorization of the
transportation bill in 2015 (Pub L. 114-94). As a result, the program’s fate each year remains
uncertain and subject to the vagaries of the annual appropriations process.
The TIGER program has not been without its challenges. Evaluation of earlier rounds of
funding found that award decisions were not adequately documented (GAO, 2011), which left
open the opportunity for awards to be made on political grounds by program officers interpret-
ing CBAs differently depending on the project applicant (Feigenbaum, 2012). Some of these
legitimate criticisms of earlier TIGER grant review cycles have been addressed by refining pro-
gram guidelines and review procedures, but further improvements should be considered, such
as tightening the focus on regional projects that cross state lines and yield the highest national
economic development and environmental benefits (GAO, 2014).
That being said, TIGER has gone through multiple rounds of solicitations over the past
seven years, building up a wealth of experience and expertise. This program could be expanded
and better targeted to projects with broader regional benefits for which revenues cannot be
easily collected directly from beneficiaries, and thus not likely to be attractive to private inves-
tors. Appropriate cost-sharing would be required to ensure full buy-in among those jurisdic-
tions in the affected region. There is no equivalent TIGER program for water-related infra-
structure, but there could be, housed within either the BOR or the USACE, as an alternative
to their existing funding mechanisms through congressional authorization.
Prior to taking office, then-President-elect Trump’s transition team staff circulated
a “working draft” list of “sample” priority projects to the National Governors Association
(Wagner, 2017). Since taking office, the Trump Administration has avoided naming specific
projects. It formed an infrastructure task force to oversee its interagency effort to build a com-
prehensive infrastructure proposal, summarized in a fact sheet (OMB, no date) but with few
other details thus far. In its FY 2018 budget, the Trump Administration proposed to eliminate
the TIGER program entirely, although the idea of nationally significant projects remains.
Providing Flexibility to State and Local Governments

State and local governments have long had the discretion to plan for and implement feder-
ally assisted transportation and water projects according to their needs and priorities. DOT’s
Surface Transportation Program, through which states pass a substantial portion of funds to
regions, has historically been the most flexible. While no significant structural changes were
made to the program in the FAST Act, Congress renamed the program the Surface Transpor-
tation Block Grant Program to stress this flexibility.5 Funds within this program can be used
for nearly any type of transportation project, whether highway, bridge, transit, pedestrian,
or bicycle. This type of program serves as a sort of modified block grant program, whereby a
collection of specific but related categorical grant programs is effectively consolidated into a
broader categorical program.
5 Despite its name, the program does not operate with the same degree of flexibility as traditional block grant programs
of other federal agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development
Block Grant (CDBG) Program.
Policy Options 75
Another model for coordination across federal agencies is EPA’s Performance Partnership
Grants (PPG) program, which allow grantees to combine funding from 17 separate environ-
mental categorical grant programs into a single grant with a single budget and grant-specific
performance metrics. Authorized by Congress as part of the National Environmental Perfor-
mance Partnership System in 1996, the PPG model has been used by 43 states in reducing
administrative burden and maximizing overall outcomes among numerous stovepiped cat-
egorical grants (EPA, 2014).
In 2014, Congress built on this model to establish cross-agency Performance Partnership
Pilots (Pub L. 113-76; 31 U.S.C. 1502). This pilot program was developed around the consoli-
dation of grants from multiple federal agencies for the purpose of addressing the challenges
facing disconnected youth.6 In order to blend funds from across departments and agencies,
participating departments and agencies were granted broad waiver authority to align eligible
activities and to reconcile or remove regulatory barriers. While it is too early to determine the
success of this model, it is a test of a conceptual approach that could perhaps be broadened
to include blending funds from multiple federal departments toward coordinated infrastruc-
ture investments at the state and local levels. Early evaluation of the pilot has noted that it
takes time to institutionalize the necessary level of shared knowledge and collaboration among
agency staff to align performance priorities, maximize waiver flexibility, and streamline report-
ing requirements (Lester, 2016). However, given the scale of federal investment in transporta-
tion and water infrastructure by numerous departments and agencies, further exploration of
ways to simplify administration of currently stovepiped grant programs while increasing flex-
ibility and outcomes is likely to be worth the effort.
The Trump Administration’s budget document for FY 2018 highlights its priority to
remove, reduce, or better coordinate federal regulatory requirements that state and local gov-
ernments, as well as developers and other businesses, perceive as inhibiting timely investment
in infrastructure.
Encouraging Public-Private Partnerships Through Credit Subsidies

In addition to authorizing the capitalization of state revolving loan funds for storm water and
wastewater systems (1987) and drinking water systems (1996), Congress authorized the TIFIA
credit assistance program for transportation projects in 1998 and WIFIA program for water
projects in 2014, as discussed in Chapter Three. Neither of these policy tools is new, as loan
fund capitalization has been around for 30 years and credit subsidies for nearly 20 years. While
both tools have undergone tweaks over the years, they remain limited in their ability to trans-
form the landscape of infrastructure finance.
The Obama Administration made several efforts to ease the path toward greater private-
sector investment in local infrastructure. It established new offices in DOT and EPA dedicated
to infrastructure finance and provided support for these centers.7 These centers serve as single
points of contact for all financing-related issues, provide guidance to state and local govern-
ment to help build capacity, and work with the private sector in an attempt to standardize and
6 Congress has authorized five departments and two agencies to participate: the Departments of Education, Labor, Health
and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Justice, and the Corporation for National and Community
Service and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
7 The Build America Bureau at DOT and the Water Infrastructure Resiliency and Finance Center at the EPA.
streamline the often-complicated process of establishing PPPs. Another key focus of these cen-
ters is the coordination and administration of the TIFIA and WIFIA programs.
President Trump’s FY 2018 budget calls for the expansion of TIFIA, WIFIA, and PABs
(OMB, no date). The Trump Administration also signaled its interest in lowering barriers for
private capital to public infrastructure and incentivizing the sale and privatization of existing
public infrastructure as a means of generating substantial cash for state and local governments
that would then invest in new projects, a process the Australians call “recycling assets” (Eicher,
2017).
Implementing New Forms of User Fees

Beginning around 2006, Congress and many states have been considering new forms of direct
highway user fees (“Road User Fee Pilot Program Results Summary,” no date). These are increas-
ingly feasible because of developing technology, such as vehicle telematics, global positioning
satellites, cell towers, and on-board diagnostics, that can report vehicle movements. The FAST
Act allocated $95 million under Section 6020, requiring the U.S. Secretary of Transportation
to “provide grants to states to demonstrate user-based alternative revenue mechanisms that
utilize a user fee structure to maintain the long-term solvency of the Highway Trust Fund.”
The states of Oregon and California are engaged in field trials of systems that would charge
travelers electronically per mile of driving, and which could eventually charge different rates
for travel at different times of day, on different classes of roads, and for different groups of
vehicles. Six other states and consortia of states are planning trials as well (DOT, Office of
Public Affairs, 2016).8 While this program is too recent to have yielded substantial results, and
many remain skeptical that direct user fees will be adopted on a wide scale, this approach to
transportation funding is emerging rapidly and will be closely watched.9
Coordinating and Leveraging Investment Strategies

Relatively early in the Obama Administration, OMB issued a memo to the heads of all execu-
tive departments and agencies that outlined a new approach for how federal resources should
be budgeted and deployed. Recognizing the continuing growth trend of the nation’s cities and
surrounding metropolitan areas (which contain more than 80 percent of the nation’s popula-
tion and generate nearly 90 percent of its GDP), the memo established a “place-based” policy
to direct federal investments (OMB, 2009). This policy attempts to draw on the compounding
effect of well-coordinated action to increase the impact of government dollars in specific geo-
graphic areas by leveraging those investments with other public, nonprofit, and private-sector
investment occurring in the area.
This policy, which was further outlined in a subsequent OMB budget memo (OMB,
2010b), was reflected in executive agency actions until the end of the Obama Administration.10
8 For background, see also Sorensen, Ecola, and Wachs (2012).

9 For periodic updates on the status of direct user charges, see Mileage-Based User Fee Alliance (no date).
10 Place-based principles were initially put to work through the implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvest-
ment Act of 2009, but would also be reflected in various multi-agency program initiatives, such as the Partnership for
Sustainable Communities, Strong Cities/Strong Communities Initiative, Empowerment Zones, Regional Innovation Clus-
ters Initiative, Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, Promise Zone Initiative, Choice Neighborhoods Program, Partner-
ships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization, and the Investing in Manufacturing Communities
Partnership.
Policy Options 77
The policy sought to maximize economic growth and increase the cost-effectiveness of federal
financial investments. It also directed agency staff and technical assistance to break down
siloes, align regulatory requirements, and build capacity at the local level. The place-based
policy took a regional approach to coordinating investments, often at a multijurisdictional
scale. Given that local capacity has long been a challenge for many communities, this policy
has resulted in the federal government being more proactive in creating the local/state/federal
partnerships often needed to affect transformative change on the ground.
This and similar policies have relatively low costs but can result in high returns by get-
ting the most out of what is already being invested, while building capacity and advancing
program reform in the process (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2017).
The policy was formalized through the establishment of a Community Solutions Council by
Executive Order in November 2016, just prior to the end of the Obama Administration (The
White House, Executive Order 13748, Establishing a Community Solutions Council). It remains
to be seen whether such a policy will be retained by the Trump Administration.
Incentivizing Innovation
Competition has been used as an approach to achieve excellence and innovation since the earli-
est days of the U.S. government. The designs for both the U.S. Capitol building and the White
House were the winners of competitions in 1792. In recent times, competitions and challenges
often receive bipartisan support to drive innovation, solve complex problems, and maximize
taxpayer return on investment. The America COMPETES Act (Pub L. 110-69), signed into
law in 2007 by President George W. Bush and reauthorized in 2011 by President Obama (Pub
L. 114-322), encourages federal departments and agencies to use competitions and challenges
as a key tool in achieving their mission.
In March 2010, OMB issued a memo to further stimulate federal departments and agen-
cies to use prizes and challenges (OMB, 2010a). It established a web-based hub for federal
prizes and challenges to advance open government and share lessons learned and best practices.
Challenge.gov, maintained by the U.S. General Services Administration, has since received
Harvard University’s Innovations in American Government Award and contains information
on more than 740 federal prize and challenge competitions.
One of the primary goals of competitions is to generate solutions that are highly replicable
and/or scalable beyond their initial application. While competitions are often seen used in the
fields of science, technology, and health, they are also being used to increase the performance
and decrease the cost of infrastructure investments. Recent examples can be seen is the Desal
Prize, sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the BOR, and the
Smart City Challenge, sponsored by DOT.
The Desal Prize was an engineering competition to develop technologies that could desal-
inate salt water to a drinkable quality. The top five teams produced technologies that were able
to be deployed as pilot projects, with a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
being named the winner in 2015. Competitions such as this are able to generate infrastructure
solutions that benefit cities not only in the United States, but around the world.
Competitions, in addition to generating innovative solutions that increase performance
and/or decrease costs, can also successfully leverage nonfederal investment from philanthropy
and the private sector. The Smart City Challenge solicited cities seeking to integrate innovative
technologies into their transportation networks. The winner, Columbus, Ohio, was awarded a
$40 million grant from DOT to help implement its strategy. The $40 million DOT award was
joined by a $10 million pledge from private-sector partners, and the seven finalist cities in the
Smart City Challenge raised more than $500 million in other funding from a wide variety of
partners to help implement their strategies (DOT, 2016c). Because they are new programs, it
is still too early to assess their effectiveness.
Maintaining Consistent Procedures and Criteria for Project Evaluation

“Cutting red tape” has been a rallying call among those who would like to see fewer regu-
lations imposed on public investments. The Obama Administration sought to simplify and
streamline uniform administrative requirements (combining multiple OMB circulars) and
permitting processes and procedures (under the National Environmental Protection Act) to
lighten the administrative burden on investors and reduce external risk to project partners
(Council on Environmental Quality, 2014; DOT, Build America Burea, 2017). When multiple
public agencies are involved in reviewing a major infrastructure proposal, there is ample room
for front-end coordination to consolidate public meetings, share data and models, run review
processes concurrently, and work on a single timeline to ensure timeliness and consistency.
An early example of this model was implemented in the landmark December 1994 Bay Delta
accord when four federal agencies, the State of California, municipal water suppliers, environ-
mental organizations, and agricultural interests came together on a single regulatory review
process (Rieke, 1996). In the last two years of the Obama Administration, an interagency team
moved to increase certainty in the federal permitting process through development of two
presidential memoranda, an executive order, and a detailed implementation plan (U.S. Depart-
ment of Treasury and U.S Department of Transportation, Build America Investment Initiative
Interagency Working Group, 2015).
In his first days in office, President Trump announced his intention to freeze all new fed-
eral regulations and reduce existing regulations by “75 percent,” although the precise meaning
of that target is unclear (Restuccia and Juliano, 2017; Devaney and Wheeler, 2017). Regula-
tory relief was a keystone of the Trump Administration’s first months in office (e.g., Executive
Orders 13777 and 13783) and is expected to be part of his infrastructure initiative, which had
not been released at the time of this writing.
Aside from the question of how much regulation is appropriate, there are questions about
the extent to which federal agencies use the same procedures and criteria when evaluating the
efficacy of similar types of federally funded projects, and whether those criteria are consistent
with current policy. As one particularly apt example in the area of infrastructure policy, com-
prehensive life-cycle analyses have not been established with consistency across the federal
agencies in the same way that CBAs have. Life-cycle analysis should be a critical determinant
for investment when the provider of capital is not the same as the entity responsible for O&M
over the lifetime of the investment, as is typically the case for most federal infrastructure
investment. State and local governments, anxious to take advantage of available federal fund-
ing, often saddle themselves with assets that they may not be capable of maintaining, particu-
larly if their regional or local economies are stagnant or in decline.
As an example of improving consistency, a 2015 OMB memorandum clarified guid-
ance to agencies in their consideration of benefits of ecosystem services (OMB, 2015). Other
recently revised agency guidance documents incorporate the valuation of environmental ben-
efits (e.g., USACE, 2016; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Science Advi-
sory Board, 2016).
Policy Options 79
Spending and Policy Changes Recently Proposed
Proposed changes in spending or policy related to infrastructure should be viewed through

the lenses of current conditions and future economic and fiscal projections. At the time of
this writing, the U.S. economy is growing slowly but is not in recession. The national unem-
ployment rate was 4.2 percent in September 2017, although the rate was higher and lower in
specific areas and among some demographic groups (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017). Job cre-
ation is a stated priority for Congress and the administration, but infrastructure spending may
not necessarily be the vehicle by which that priority will be pursued. At the same time, CBO
has estimated that the federal budget deficit will grow by 2027 to $1.4 trillion, or 5 percent of
GDP, under current program assumptions (CBO, 2017). This projection will change depend-
ing on tax cuts and spending increases enacted in the coming years.
Direct Federal Spending

The challenge for sponsors of bills authorizing direct spending on infrastructure is to find
offsets in the budget— that is, other spending items to cut as a means of remaining “revenue-
neutral” according to congressional budget rules in place. In light of CBO’s recent deficit esti-
mates, this hurdle has likely become even higher for major infrastructure spending, particu-
larly new programs authorized in the previous Congress.
In the closing week of the 116th Congress, President Obama signed the Water Resources
Development Act (WRDA; Pub L. 114-322, Title I) to fund new water infrastructure (Smith
and Barrigan-Parrilla, 2016). WRDA authorized new spending on deepening “nationally sig-
nificant” ports, authorized 30 new projects, and modified eight others. It also included funds
to support the replacement of lead service lines in Flint, Michigan (Section 7101). With the
2015 passage of the FAST Act, Congress may not see a need to authorize further transportation
spending in the near term (Zanona, 2017). FAST authorized $305 billion for total transporta-
tion spending between 2016 and 2020 (DOT, Federal Highway Administration, 2017b; DOT,
Federal Highway Administration, 2016; DOT, 2016a).
Passing these periodic transportation and water infrastructure authorization bills is a nec-
essary but insufficient condition for federal spending. Lawmakers need to also ensure that
funds are appropriated or, in the case of the FAST Act, allocated from the Highway Trust
Fund, for authorized programs. Individual appropriations bills have been largely superseded
in recent years by Continuing Resolutions that maintain the prior year’s spending levels. Con-
gressional disagreements about spending priorities may dampen prospects of significant new
spending. At the time of this writing, President Trump’s FY 2018 budget proposes to eliminate
dozens of existing federal infrastructure programs in DOT, the USACE, the U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in favor of ini-
tiatives aimed at attracting private investment in public infrastructure (OMB, 2017; OMB, no
date).
Members of the Senate and House have already introduced dozens of bills in the 117th
Congress to authorize higher levels of infrastructure spending. On January 24, 2017, a group
of Senate Democrats announced plans to introduce a bill to authorize $1 trillion spending that
they say would “create 15 million jobs over 10 years” (O’Keefe and Mufson, 2017). Their plan
would provide authority to spend not only on transportation and water infrastructure, but also
on the electricity grid, broadband, hospitals within the Veterans Health Administration, and
schools. In addition, they would set aside $200 million of the $1 trillion for projects of national
significance or what they call “vital infrastructure projects” and funding of $10 billion to seed
an infrastructure “bank” to offer loans and loan guarantees to private investors. To avoid
adding to the deficit, the senators say that they will close tax loopholes. Finally, some members
of Congress and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke support increasing direct federal spend-
ing on the large backlog of maintenance and repair needs within the National Park System,
estimated to be in the range of $12.5 billion (Fears, 2017).
Changes in Tax and Other Policies and Regulations

In September 2017, the Trump Administration released a fact sheet on its proposed infra-
structure initiative (OMB, 2017). The $200 billion initiative promotes four principles: make
targeted federal investments, encourage self-help, align infrastructure investments with entities
best suited to provide sustained and efficient investment, and leverage the private sector. The
initiative also spells out numerous proposed policy changes, including reform of the Inland
Waterways Trust Fund, a mechanism originally established in 1986 to collect tolls from com-
mercial users of federally maintained waterways to cover half of the capital costs of the system.
Other proposals include a Federal Capital Revolving Fund to aid in financing nonmilitary
federal capital assets, and Partnership Grants for Federal Assets, a means to draw private part-
ners into the improvement of federal infrastructure. Most of these proposals have not yet been
explained in detail or translated into legislative language.
Prior to announcing its current initiative, the Trump Administration had signaled its
intent to leverage tax credits to investors in infrastructure projects to generate a total of $1 tril-
lion of investment in infrastructure (The Economist, 2017). In subsequent communications,
the administration suggested $800 million of private investment and $200 million in direct
spending. Tax credits are classified in budget terms as expenditures. For each $1 invested in
infrastructure, the tax credit would reduce the investor’s tax liability by $0.82. The credit
would only apply to equity investment; funds borrowed for investment would not be eligible
for the credit. In practice, enforcement could be problematic: It is not clear how equity invest-
ments can be distinguished from investments first borrowed from elsewhere.
In explanatory material accompanying the January 2017 plan, a claim was made that the
plan is revenue-neutral, but this claim relied on a number of significant assumptions:
• $1 of every $6 invested will be equity investment and hence eligible for the credit.
• 44 percent of the total $1 trillion investment will become new wages, and 10 percent will
become new corporate profits.
• Wages and corporate profits will be taxed at an average rate of 28 percent (personal
income) and 15 percent (the capital gains tax rate), respectively.11
• The investment arising from the tax credits would come from sources not previously
subject to any federal taxation, such as repatriating funds previously held abroad; other-
wise, any tax revenue raised through infrastructure wages and profits is simply displacing
wages and profits that would have been taxed regardless.
11 The 28 percent marginal income tax rate starts at $91,000 for single filers, $130,000 for head of household, and $152,000
for married filing jointly. The average construction worker is not in this tax bracket. The Trump campaign plan appeared
to suggest that a quarter of the wage-based tax revenue would come from some tax which is diverted to a trust, such as a
payroll tax.
Policy Options 81
These assumptions would be difficult to meet. Another challenging assumption was

that there would be sufficient opportunities for investors to gain profitable returns on these
investments.
For a simple example, suppose that a developer invests $1 million in an infrastructure
project that pays back in one year with a 3 percent annual return. Following the Trump plan’s
assumptions, this developer borrows an additional $5 million to invest, presumably at a rate
less than 3 percent (otherwise, the developer would not borrow the $5 million); we arbitrarily
presume 2 percent for this example. The developer receives $0.82 million through the tax
credit, and then is paid another $6.18 million from user fees or taxpayers at the end of the year.
The developer then repays $5.10 million to the lender from which it borrowed $5 million, and
keeps $1.08 million. In short, the developer provided $1 million in exchange for $1.90 million
($0.82 million + $1.08 million). Under the assumptions of the Trump Administration’s ear-
lier infrastructure plan, $0.82 million appears as tax revenue, not as an expenditure, meaning
taxpayers and users effectively spent $6.18 million paying back the $6 million infrastructure
loan—a good deal. But if we instead assume the money invested in this infrastructure simply
displaces otherwise taxed investments, then $7 million in user fees and tax credits were used to
build infrastructure that cost $6 million—not a good deal. And if other assumptions related
to the tax credit proposal were not met, the deal would be even more costly for taxpayers and
users.12
Expanding Capital Pools: Public Pension Funds as Investors in Infrastructure

Although lack of capital is not always the problem, there have been calls from public officials
for public pension funds to increase their investment in domestic infrastructure. Public pen-
sions have several appealing properties as potential investors, but they currently invest relatively
little in domestic infrastructure. This is because their long-run investment interests tend to
match the long lifespans of infrastructure projects better than the investment funds currently
available to them, which demand profit over shorter time horizons (Eicher, 2013). First and
foremost, however, pension funds have fiduciary responsibilities to pensioners, present and
future, and must strive for the best returns on investment while carefully managing their risks.
Because public pension funds do not pay taxes on investment income, municipal bonds, with
their lower interest rates, are less attractive than higher-yielding investments. Public pensions
have largely responded by investing in other countries’ infrastructure, where higher rates of
return on investment can be achieved and risks can be better managed (Eicher, 2013).
Encouraging Public-Private Partnerships

As a means of injecting more private capital into a system perceived as short of public capital,
proposals have been advanced over the years to make it easier for private parties to invest in
local and regional transportation and other projects. To this end, the Bipartisan Policy Center
(BPC) released a report in 2016 calling for states to both loosen and standardize their treat-
12 The logic is as follows: $0.82 million was spent as a tax credit, and $6 million was borrowed. The $6.18 million is the
full repayment for the money borrowed at a 3 percent interest rate ($6.18 million + $0.82 million = $7.00 million). How
much money appears as new tax revenue to offset this $7 million bill depends on assumptions. The cost could easily be
higher than $7 million. If firms do not borrow money to invest in infrastructure—if all $6 million is instead an equity
investment—then the total cost to taxpayers and users could instead be as high as $11.10 million ($4.92 million paid in tax
credits, in addition to the $6.18 million in loan repayment). The U.S. economy would effectively be borrowing from private
investors at higher than market interest rates.
ment of PPPs as a way to reduce risks and consequently lower the barriers of entry for private
investors into public infrastructure markets (BPC, 2016). The BPC report noted three major
barriers to private investment: lack of a project pipeline, political risk that may delay or stop a
project that already had received approval, and permitting risk associated with complex and
sequential regulatory reviews that typically accompany major infrastructure projects.
The BPC report identified a long, yet focused, list of actions that states could take to lower
barriers to private funding of public infrastructure (BPC, 2016). The report recommended that
states consider opening the door to more-effective means for alternative investors to assess and
choose attractive long-term investment opportunities. In parallel with such thinking, states
could also share their experiences with past PPPs to do a better job of fulfilling their fiduciary
responsibilities to taxpayers and managing risks on the public side. Changes in regulators’
practices would need to go hand-in-hand with efforts to increase the attractiveness of some of
these investments, but loosening environmental, health, and safety standards in the name of
streamlining or cutting red tape was not among the BPC’s recommendations. However, even if
all these measures were taken, it is unclear whether the number of project proposed for private-
sector financing is, in the words of Eicher (2013), “adequate to establish a worthwhile market
opportunity for private-sector investors.”
In March 2017, the EPA released a report documenting nine “alternative water project
delivery” methods, a term meant to encompass a wide range of alternatives to the traditional
design, bid, and build model, in which a local government entity retains ownership (Hughes,
2017). The report demonstrates the richness in experimentation now under way but, by design,
does not address whether these alternative forms are better than the traditional financing
model. In May 2017, the Trump Administration released its proposed FY 2018 budget, calling
for major initiatives to increase private investment in infrastructure across many sectors but
without providing further details.
International Examples of Public-Private Partnership Models
In 2012, the UK began offering government guaranteed loans to private-sector investors in

infrastructure, funded by fees paid by the developers who stand to gain from the investment
opportunity. The government bears the risk and as yet has not had to bail anyone out. With
low default rates, lenders were able to offer lower interest rates (Government of the United
Kingdom, 2012). As another example of government subsidizing of risk, the Netherlands offers
inflation-proof payments on loans backed by the government. Lenders thus reduce inflation
risk in their portfolio and offer lower interest rates (Bennon, Monk, and Nowacki, 2015).
In Europe, Australia, and Canada, policymakers encouraged their pension funds to pool
assets to diversify risk and to achieve economies of scale in deploying capital into infrastruc-
ture. Perhaps the best example of this approach is in Australia, where pooled-asset structures,
according to Eicher (personal communication, 2016), enable “institutional investors to make
direct investments in infrastructure assets and projects. This capacity enables investors to draw
on in-house expertise to make investment decisions and to acquire equity ownership interests
in assets. This lowers costs and increases control over their investments.”
Australia has been experimenting with an “asset recycling” program, essentially a means
of privatizing many public infrastructure systems while generating cash for local government
Policy Options 83
to invest in new infrastructure. Its success has stimulated interest among U.S. policymakers
(Eicher, 2017).
Synthesis of Findings
Promising policy initiatives are under way. Many additional options have been proposed within
Congress and among nongovernmental organizations to “fix” some aspect of the infrastructure
problem. Programs and initiatives in other countries further expand the pool of options for
consideration within a U.S. context.
Proposals intended to address infrastructure needs in the United States divide along sev-
eral lines: direct public spending, use of the tax code, and policy and process changes. In the
past several years, Congress and the Obama Administration took a series of incremental steps
toward targeting federal transportation spending on projects of national significance, stream-
lining water resource development planning processes, and improving the coordination of reg-
ulatory actions among agencies. However, many of these initiatives are still relatively immature
and limited in scope. We do not as yet have the research base to know whether they could be
effectively scaled up, nor do we yet know which of these will be continued under the Trump
Administration.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Summary of Findings and Recommendations
Our intent in this report is to present a more nuanced view of the infrastructure challenge
than has been portrayed by public officials and in the media. Not all transportation and water
infrastructure in the United States is falling apart. The extent of underinvestment differs mark-
edly by type of infrastructure, its ownership and maintenance arrangements, and the economic
fortunes of the region. For this reason, a rapid and substantial ramp-up of federal spending—
whether through direct funding, tax credits to private developers, or a combination—will
not solve the real infrastructure problems that need fixing unless accompanied by thoughtful
consideration of priorities, policy constraints, and regional variations. Further, a one-off spike
in federal spending could divert local and state governments’ attention away from their longer-
term imperative to adopt new technologies and secure sustainable financing.
In this chapter, we synthesize our findings from the preceding chapters and offer several
ideas for policymakers to consider going forward. Each of these ideas merits more extensive
analysis and field-testing.
Findings
The Spending Picture Is Not Dire
Overall, the data do not support a picture of precipitous national decline in total spending,
per capita spending, or spending as a share of GDP. Total public spending on transportation
and water infrastructure in constant dollars as a share of U.S. GDP has been remarkably stable
since 1956. Private funding in these areas of infrastructure is less than 3 percent of the total,
nearly all of which is for rail. When federal spending has declined, state and local governments
often have picked up the slack. By the end of 2016, municipal bond issues were at their highest
levels ever, more than double levels in 1996, although bond issues fluctuate from year to year.
Apart from these broad trends, federal capital spending on highways has been in a period of a
gradual decline since around 2002. Capital spending by water and wastewater utilities declined
after the 2008 financial crisis but has been rising since.
State and local O&M spending for water infrastructure has been on a relatively steady
rise since at least 1956. The system of financing new and major rehabilitation projects through
public borrowing and, to a much lesser extent, some version of PPPs is generally working for
projects whose benefits fall within single states and local jurisdictions and whose revenues are
sufficient to cover debt service and ongoing O&M costs.
85
Serious Problems Exist

Where the local and regional economies are thriving, good governance is the rule, and revenue
streams for sustainable O&M are in place, infrastructure tends to be well maintained and
modernized. Elsewhere, problems persist that defy easy solutions:
• The federal Highway Trust Fund and many of the state funds for drinking water and
wastewater treatment plants have not been operating on a sustainable basis for some time
now.
• Congestion on some interstate highways and freight transportation systems hurts regional
economies.
• Without operating subsidies, mass transit systems have a hard time paying their way.
• Critical infrastructure problems that cross jurisdictional lines, such as the proposed Gate-
way rail tunnel under the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York, are proving
difficult to resolve through existing governance arrangements.
• Communities with declining tax bases struggle to maintain their roads, bridges, and
water systems and repay their debts to bond holders.
• Some communities are at risk of flooding from structurally compromised dams and
levees, coastal communities are at risk from rising seas and changing patterns of pre-
cipitation, and many communities are vulnerable to flooding from undersized and aging
storm water systems.
Not all of these problems fall squarely within the bounds of federal funding or control,
but they each should figure prominently in the debate about national infrastructure priorities.
Federal Efforts Are Unfocused and Fragmented

Under current practice, state and local governments are responsible for 88 percent of O&M for
transportation and water infrastructure and 62 percent of capital investment (CBO, 2015). The
evidence suggests that the division of responsibility among the levels of government is generally
appropriate and does not warrant wholesale change. In addition, the federal government could
do a better job intervening in the gaps where state and local actions are less effective or beyond
their capacities. This includes not only targeted spending on capital improvement projects
with regional or national implications, but also creating appropriate incentives for regional,
state, and local authorities to innovate in their provision of infrastructure. Finally, the federal
government has a unique role in investing in R&D, including support for pilot studies to test
innovations in construction, O&M, financing, and revenue generation.
State and local governments, by and large, identify their own infrastructure funding
priorities, though the availability of federal funding can skew those priorities. States generate
priority lists for transportation projects. Local governments and water authorities generate and
routinely update capital and O&M plans. Missing from the picture is priority setting or even
vision setting at the federal level. At present, the federal government does not have an explicit
set of priorities for direct investment in infrastructure projects of national significance.
Underpricing of Infrastructure Persists

State and local governments do not always choose to price transportation and water services
commensurate with maintenance, replacement, and capacity costs. If supplemental revenue
sources are not secured, the persistence of pricing below life-cycle costs can lead to deferred
Summary of Findings and Recommendations 87
maintenance and higher demand than the user base can (or should) support—a bad combina-
tion. For surface transportation, states are experimenting with new forms of revenue-raising
to replace the declining base of federal and state excise taxes on motor fuels. The logistics of
capturing payment for transportation and water services is easier now than ever before because
of technological advances in monitoring actual usage, although the politics remain fraught.
There nonetheless remains a class of projects for which user fees are impractical, difficult
to monetize, or impolitic. These are the opportunities best suited for cross subsidies and sup-
port from general funds generated through income taxes, sales taxes, and other forms of broad-
based taxation. However, in many states, there is a tension between statehouses and local gov-
ernments about how to distribute these general funds among the competing public purposes
for which they are intended: public education, public safety, health and welfare, as well as
transportation, water supply and water quality, green space, and other broad-based needs. This
is not a technical problem, but rather one assigning relative value to different types of public
assets and services. Under our system of federalism, states are empowered to make their own
choices on these matters.
Some projects may generate national economic benefits, but not commensurate revenues,
in part because positive externalities in which project benefits extend beyond the place where
the infrastructure is located and further revenue capture is impractical. These projects could
include regional highway and rail lines in densely populated urban corridors, major port-rail-
highway junctions, major dam repair or dismantlement, and infrastructure in national parks
and other publicly managed recreational areas.
The Role of Private Capital for Transportation and Water Infrastructure Is Still at the
Margins
Much has been written about the availability of private capital to “come off the sidelines” to
support the rebuilding of public infrastructure through PPPs. The 2016 BPC report on this
topic makes a compelling, fact-based case for policy changes, predominantly at the state level,
to eliminate barriers to these funding flows. Eicher’s and others’ work on the prospect of public
pension funds to get into the U.S. infrastructure investment market is equally compelling.
Further, the federal government in recent years has taken a number of steps to lower transac-
tion costs imposed by federal rules and serial review processes, and to actively promote PPPs
on projects receiving some share of federal funding.
Estimates of both private capital and public pension fund assets potentially available for
investment suggest that they could “solve” the funding shortfall, at least for those projects that
have low-risk profiles, defined as a reliable and durable revenue stream—but there should be
no illusions about the need for these investments to be profitable and their risks manageable
for the investor. Large projects tend to carry higher risks. Striking the appropriate balance
between drawing in the private sector and shielding taxpayers from the burden of financial risk
has proven difficult in practice. This remains an area of policy in need of further refinement in
the U.S. context.
Historical Justification for Some Federal Programs No Longer Holds

The challenge for federal infrastructure programs has always been managing the tension
between meeting national needs and satisfying congressional demands for equity: among the
states, between urban and rural communities, and between older and newer communities.
Problems and needs differ from place to place, and federal capital programs painted with a
broad brush are bound to miss the mark for some. National and regional infrastructure needs
differ markedly from the decades past, when Congress first enacted many of the programs that
still dominate the policy landscape. The justification for the BOR in 1902 to reclaim the Great
American Desert is no longer valid. At the beginning of the 20th century, the U.S. population
was 60 percent rural and 40 percent urban (U.S. Census Bureau, 1995). Now, 80 percent of
the population resides and 90 percent of GDP originates in urban areas. A fuel tax made sense
when all vehicles on the road used liquid fuels, but hybrid and electric vehicles are making sig-
nificant gains, and the revenue basis for the federal Highway Trust Fund needs to be changed
accordingly.
Recommendations
To maintain stable financing for infrastructure, Congress should preserve the federal tax
exemption on interest earned from municipal bonds for at least the next decade. During
this period, lawmakers should reinstate taxable Build America Bonds (BABs) and experi-
ment with other financing alternatives. The aim is to draw as much capital into infrastruc-
ture as the market demands without the distortion of tax policies that favor one class of inves-
tors over another.
Tax-exempt municipal bonds are an inefficient means of subsidizing local government
borrowing for infrastructure projects. Still, the $3.7 trillion market for these bonds provides
stable financing to local governments. In the interest of continuity, tax-exempt municipal bonds
should be kept while alternative funding mechanisms are given a chance to develop. Congress
successfully experimented with BABs in 2009 and 2010. They offer one potential alternative.
BABs can be structured to be revenue neutral. Public pension funds and other investor classes
receive no benefit from municipal bonds’ tax exemption because they have either no or low
tax liabilities. But BABs would allow their “patient” capital to be put to work funding low-risk
infrastructure projects with long payback periods and competitive returns.
Therefore, BABs should be reinstated for a ten-year period with the assurance that the
subsidy, at whatever level set by Congress, will be honored over the life of the bonds. At the
end of the ten-year period, Congress should assess the impacts on state and local infrastruc-
ture spending and the federal budget and determine whether to maintain the status quo, make
BABs permanent, or cap or eliminate the municipal bond exemption.
The revenue model for the Highway Trust Fund, based on a federal motor fuel excise
tax, is unsustainable. The FAST Act authorized the Federal Highway Administration to
make grants to states for the purpose of exploring alternative user-based revenue collec-
tion. Congress should ramp up funding for these efforts at the state level and be prepared
to fund expansion of effective designs for broader testing in more states. Americans are
driving more but paying less into the Highway Trust Fund by using more fuel-efficient vehicles
and benefiting from lower oil prices. Over time, as more hybrid and electric vehicles come
into wider use, the decline in revenues from the sale of motor fuels will continue. To restore
stability and sustainability to the Highway Trust Fund, Congress should support a robust
program of pilot testing and experimenting with mileage-based fee collection at the state level
and direct the Federal Highway Administration to begin a long-term planning process for an
orderly transition to a new federal system.
“Shovel-ready” projects are not necessarily priority projects. Rather than using
“shovel-ready” as the criteria for federal capital investment in nonfederal assets, as was
done in the 2009 stimulus package, Congress should instead target longer-term projects
likely to produce significant national benefits. Congress should work with the Executive
Branch, states, and local governments to generate a list of regional infrastructure investments
that would increase productivity and bring demonstrable improvements in transportation and
water services. Each proposed project should undergo rigorous, transparent CBA and life-cycle
analysis to enable ranking of projects based on consistent estimates of multistate or national-
level net benefits. For example, passenger connections among rail, transit, and airports, and
freight connections among trucks, rail, and ports, are critical nodes in the U.S. transportation
infrastructure. Improvements could offer real economic gains in the form of higher economic
productivity. Priority should be given to projects with compelling multijurisdictional health,
safety, and environmental benefits and to those state and local governments that work together
to identify their top priorities for federal capital spending. Federal funding would be condi-
tional on regional sponsors securing matching funds from any combination of public and pri-
vate sources, including user fees and taxes when appropriate.
The federal government should focus its capital investment on major investments
in renewal of aging infrastructure and new infrastructure for the coming decades. To
this end, Congress should make life-cycle cost analysis and sustainability of investments
a condition of future federal transportation and water funding. Not everything that has
ever been built warrants perpetual maintenance. Some infrastructure may need to be dis-
mantled in response to changing demographics, economics, and public priorities. Under our
system of federalism, state and local governments are empowered to make their own choices
on these matters. However, federal infrastructure spending should be conditional on state and
local government demonstrating their ability to maintain new or renovated assets. Assuming
existing infrastructure is worth maintaining, more capital spending enabled by the federal
government in the absence of sustainable O&M funding for existing assets will make matters
worse for local governments struggling to make payments on existing debts.
Congress should place its highest maintenance priorities on vital federal assets. The
federal government has a responsibility to properly maintain its own vast infrastructure man-
aged by the U.S. Department of Defense, the USACE, the BOR, the National Park Service,
and other agencies with resource management and national security responsibilities. Priorities
for direct federal spending should be set based on public safety, national security, and national
economic and environmental benefits. Examples include mission-critical military bases and
such federally owned assets as dams, levees, locks, and national parks and recreation areas
around national forests, wildlife refuges, and historic sites.
Congress should require each agency to report on their estimate of funding needs
over the next 25 years to sustain the infrastructure under its jurisdiction. Agencies should
be required to describe the analytical process by which they have chosen whether to maintain,
recapitalize, perform only minimal maintenance, or divest their holdings. This would be the
foundation of a federal capital budget to be updated on an as-needed basis.
Congress should condition capital funding on state and local governments’ efforts
to incorporate resilience to natural disasters and adaptation to rising seas and other
climate trends. The dollar value of damage from extreme weather events has quadrupled in
real terms over the past four decades. New spending creates an opportunity to make design
changes in old infrastructure or rethink infrastructure concepts entirely to meet new condi-
tions. Following the lead of many states and cities, Congress should embed resilience guide-
lines in federal infrastructure investment through statutory means. Well-executed resilience
measures have the potential to constrain or reduce spending on the growing federal cost of
disaster assistance, which GAO estimated to have been at least $277 billion between FYs 2005
and 2014 (GAO, 2016) and is likely to rise in the future.
Congress should support state and local governments in their development of
common standards for structuring public-private partnerships. The U.S. experience with
PPPs in the realm of transportation and water infrastructure has been mixed, with success
largely hinging on the skill of state and local negotiators in balancing the benefits and financial
risks to the public. From the perspective of private investors, the market for such investments
is fragmented and fraught with political risks and uncertainties in project timing. Navigating
different rules across the states is a burden on investors and adds to political uncertainties. The
federal government could provide technical assistance and help with tax issues and permitting
processes.
The federal government should streamline regulatory approval processes involving
multiple federal agencies while honoring applicable environmental, health, and safety
standards. Consensus-building around major infrastructure investment is a challenging busi-
ness in a democratic society when multiple public objectives are in play—and often in conflict
with one another. As part of the U.S. system of checks and balances on government power,
administrative processes are designed to enable stakeholders to engage, review, and intervene
in regulatory decisions on grounds of protecting health, safety, and the environment. Trying to
circumvent public participation and undermine widely supported protections and standards in
the name of speeding up infrastructure projects can result in delay or gridlock. But sometimes
multiple agencies regulate sequentially and without coordination. Experience has shown that
efficiencies can be gained by consolidating information gathering and organizing collaborative,
concurrent public outreach and review processes among agencies, as recommended in 2015 by
the Build America Investment Initiative Interagency Working Group.
Congress should end the historical division of the USACE and the BOR and con-
solidate them into a single federal water resource agency. Consolidation would impose
consistency in exercising the federal role in water infrastructure and its maintenance; enable a
more integrated and fair approach to water resource management in partnership with states,
local governments, and other stakeholders; and bring the water infrastructure programs of
the two agencies under the same congressional oversight. Consolidating the transportation
modal administrations into a more unified and integrated DOT also might be more efficient,
but would likely be more difficult to implement because of the multiplicity of private and
public interests and regulatory responsibilities served across the various modal administrations.
Government reorganizations come with large costs. These costs need to be carefully weighed
against the potential benefits of consolidating technical expertise and encouraging integrated
water resource and transportation management.
Congress should place some big bets on research, development, and deployment
of new technologies to support infrastructure construction and maintenance. We pro-
pose an infrastructure research agenda that would build on the competitive peer-reviewed
grant mechanisms already in place with the Transportation Research Board. This should be
expanded into an integrated infrastructure research program that crosses sectoral lines and
coordinates the needs and resources of individual agencies across the federal government. The
agenda would stimulate the development of new concepts of provisioning of infrastructure and
improve building methods and materials, engineering designs, cost-effectiveness and efficiency,
and all aspects of system operations.
Widespread adoption of newer construction methods, more durable and sustainable
materials, and sensor technologies could have a profound effect on the calculus of infrastruc-
ture maintenance. Advances have been made in new materials that could extend the lives of
roads, bridges, and pipes. New road coverings have been developed and are in use elsewhere
in the world. Sensors could help pinpoint maintenance needs and operational concerns. Road
technologies must adapt to the age of driverless vehicles. Smart roads, long a dream of trans-
portation experts, are not far away: We already have ground-penetrating radars and embedded
sensors that can report on the condition of infrastructure in real time. Current policies and
funding mechanisms will require changes to encourage more transitional experiments and
pilot projects.
Improving the capacity to govern and make analytically supportable decisions across juris-
dictional lines ought to be a research priority as least as high as those topics above relating to
new technologies. Research in the social and behavioral sciences could help to inform changes
in how local, state, and regional governmental bodies tackle the difficult cross-jurisdictional
decisions on infrastructure operations and investment.
Abbreviations
ARRA American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

ASCE American Society of Civil Engineers
BAB Build American Bond
BOR U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
BPC Bipartisan Policy Center
CBA cost-benefit analysis
CBO Congressional Budget Office
CWSRF Clean Water State Revolving Fund
DOT U.S. Department of Transportation
DWSRF Drinking Water State Revolving Fund
EPA U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
FAST Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act
FY fiscal year
GAO U.S. Governmental Accountability Office
GDP gross domestic product
MPO Metropolitan Planning Organization
NHTSA National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration
O&M operations and maintenance
OMB White House Office of Management and Budget
PAB Private Activity Bond
PPP public-private partnership
R&D research and development
SDWA Safe Drinking Water Act
SIB State Infrastructure Bank
SRF state revolving fund
TEL tax and expenditure limitation
TIFIA Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act
TIGER Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery
TIP transportation improvement plan
USACE U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
93
WIFIA Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act

WIN Water Infrastructure Network
WRDA Water Resources Development Act
References
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executive departments and agencies, M-09-28, August 11, 2009.
———, “Guidance on the Use of Prizes and Challenges to Promote Open Government,” memorandum for
the heads of executive departments and agencies, M-10-11, March 10, 2010a.
———, “Developing Effective Place-Based Policies for the FY 2012 Budget,” memorandum for the heads of
executive departments and agencies, M-10-21, June 21, 2010b.
———, “Incorporating Ecosystem Services into Federal Decision Making,” memorandum for executive
departments and agencies, M-16-01, October 7, 2015. As of September 18, 2017:
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2016/m-16-01.pdf
———, A New Foundation for American Greatness—President’s Budget FY2018, Washington, D.C.: The
White House, 2017. As of September 18, 2017:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/budget/fy2018/budget.pdf
References 111
WIN—See Water Infrastructure Network.

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Benefits and Risks of PPPs,” October 31, 2016. As of September 21, 2017:
https://ppp.worldbank.org/public-private-partnership/overview/ppp-objectives
Zanona, Melanie, “Ryan Offers Picture of Public-Private Spending in Trump’s Infrastructure Plan,” The Hill,
January 19, 2017.
This report identifies the policies that promote and deter investment in and maintenance of U.S. transportation and
water infrastructure. It focuses on status and trends in operations and maintenance (O&M) and capital spending by
all levels of government; reviews current policy and practice; and recommends actions that the federal government
could take to better align both policy and spending to public priorities.
The United States’ transportation and water infrastructure needs are diverse, as are the reasons for maintenance
backlogs and delays in rebuilding and modernization. Massive federal spending to repair or build anew may do
some good by stimulating demand for construction services, but it will not fix what is broken in our approach to
funding and financing public works—and not everything is broken. Underinvestment, to the extent it is occurring,
varies widely by ownership, geography, and type of infrastructure. For example, while road and bridge conditions
generally have improved overall since 2002, conditions on less-traveled roads have deteriorated. Lasting changes
will require thoughtful consideration of targeted spending priorities, policy constraints, and regional differences.
The authors see no need for wholesale change in current roles and responsibilities among federal, state, and local
governments. Policy changes at the federal level could drive public spending to high-priority regional-scale projects
designed to deliver sustained national economic benefits. Changes in federal tax and fiscal policy could draw
more private capital into financing public infrastructure, but direct private investment in transportation and water
infrastructure is likely for only a limited class of profitable projects, and striking the appropriate balance between a
larger role for the private sector and protecting taxpayers from financial risk has proven difficult in practice.
C O R P O R AT I O N
www.rand.org $35.00
ISBN-10 0-8330-9971-X
ISBN-13 978-0-8330-9971-6
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RR-1739-RC 9 780833 099716

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Not Everything Is Broken

The Future of U.S. Transportation and Water

Debra Knopman, Martin Wachs, Benjamin M. Miller, Scott G. Davis,

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication.

Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif.

Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights

RAND Infrastructure Resilience and Environmental Policy

4.1. Disparities in Structurally Deficient Bridges Among Counties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Highways Mass transit and rail

Ten Recommendations to Congress on Infrastructure

U.S. Infrastructure: What Is the Problem?

3 National Economic Council and President’s Council of Economic Advisors, 2014.

These numbers matter because persistent underinvestment in infrastructure could be a

Who Pays for Public Works, and Why?

Often-Cited Supply-Side Issues

8 See Grabell (2012) for more detail.

Often-Cited Demand-Side Issues

Insufficient Interagency Coordination and Dysfunctional Regional Governance

Public Expectations of Infrastructure Investment

How This Report Is Organized

Status of and Trends in Spending on Transportation and Water

Transportation infrastructure includes

• highways, bridges, and tunnels

Decision Capital investment in new

Sustainment of project operations

Extend life Decision

Major repair Rehab Delay Project

Diffuse public benefits;

NOTE: PPP = public-private partnership.

Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure: 2014

Rail ($3 billion)

Highways Mass transit Aviation

0 50 100 150 200 250 300

Highways 28% 72%

Water utilitiesa 4% 96%

Aviation 44% 56%

Water resourcesb 35% 65%

0 50 100 150 200

Own-source flows Intergovernmental transfers Direct spending on transportation

Capital Operation and maintenance

Federal government State and local governments

Capital: Operation and

Trends in Public Spending on Transportation and Water Infrastructure

Highways Mass transit and rail

Operation and maintenance spending

Trends in Public Spending on Highways and Mass Transit

Vehicle-miles traveled by freight

Trends in Public Spending on Water Utilities

We distinguish spending on water resource infrastructure (e.g., dams, reservoirs, waterways)

Trends in Private-Sector Spending on Transportation and Water

Operation and maintenance spending

Highways 1.5 44.9 46.4 118.3 164.7 0.0 164.7

Rail 0.3 2.7 3.0 N/A 3.0 9.7 12.7

Mass transit 0.2 12.3 12.5 52.9 65.4 0.2 65.6

Aviation 12.9 3.2 16.1 20.0 36.1 1.0 37.1

Water 4.2 0.1 4.3 5.6 9.9 0.3 10.2

Water resources 9.8 0.1 9.9 18.3 28.2 0.0 28.2

Water utilities 0.0 4.4 4.4 104.5 108.9 0.8a 109.7

Total 28.9 67.7 96.6 319.6 416.2 12.0 428.2