[USA] Rebuilding the highways

[Bryn666]

Over in Electionland, Trump has claimed he'd get all the infrastructure rebuilt.

So, those who know anything about America, which highways in particular? Many are pretty knackered, and in the urban areas due to city populations shifting, several are redundant.

[WHBM]

The US had a particular affection in past times for through truss steel bridges, which appear to have a limited life and are also often a bottleneck in any subsequent widening. We don't really do these in the UK.

If you aren't sure what a through truss bridge is, it's one of these, where you drive through the steel bridge truss.

https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl= ... mrc&uact=8

[Mark Hewitt]

I seem to remember. The old Redheugh bridge at Newcastle was like that? Replaced in the 80s.

How does that compare to the likes of the Tyne Bridge

[firefly]

So, those who know anything about America, which highways in particular?

Well, the Interstate Highways are administered by the federal government and it were millions of rust belt workers who elected him. So Interstates between Philadelphia and Milwaukee will probably be over-proportionally improved in the forthcoming years.

[Truvelo]

Hopefully projects like this will still get built. The 8664 campaign lost and the interchange was built

http://www.eomahaforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=8732

[WHBM]

Although the Interstates are indeed funded and managed principally by the Federal government, within city areas their predominant use is for local traffic. It has been a mechanism for spending Federal funds for more localised benefit.

Notable when the earthquake destroyed several key freeways in Los Angeles in the 1990s, the state highways authority immediately announced them by their Interstate numbers, which were previously little used in the city. The Golden State Freeway was suddenly announced only as Interstate 5, and the Foothill Freeway likewise was only described as Interstate 210, which I think few in Los Angeles even knew was its official number. Someone was making a point !

Regarding new infrastructure, I would expect long-planned Interstate 11, across Arizona from Phoenix to Las Vegas, would be a nice early gift for Arizona voting for Trump.

[KeithW]

Over in Electionland, Trump has claimed he'd get all the infrastructure rebuilt.

So, those who know anything about America, which highways in particular? Many are pretty knackered, and in the urban areas due to city populations shifting, several are redundant.

The Interstates are usually quite well maintained but state roads can be a very different story and in local terms these are often very busy and important local routes. After 3 years living in Columbus Ohio I came to think of it as the land of the rusty bridge as many seemed never to have been repainted since they were built in the early 20th century. A classic example was SR 315 running from I 270 which is the Ring Road and runs North/South through the centre of Columbus. It was in terrible shape. Having been built in the 1930's it was a classic early D2 road with extremely short sliproads and a very rough largely concrete surface bearing the scars of many decades of filled in potholes. When they eventually refurbished it in the late 1990's that work took longer than the original construction had.

[Mark Hewitt]

Not wishing to drag things too far the political arguments line, but I guess that's the outcome of low tax, low spend. Sure you get to keep more of your take home pay, but there's less to go around to spend on keeping things in order.

[brombeer]

Agreed. There are stories of American communities voting against a minor increase to local taxes to give their local school a much-needed refurbishment. But if you insist on keeping your taxes low, it's not that any troop of fairies will come along overnight to fix it. Rather than paying for new infrastructure out of tax income, there is of course the option of borrowing, but that too will result in interest expenditure that will have to be funded out of taxes. Historically, governments have opted for borrowing under an assumption that growth would outweigh the expenditure. This worked well for generations, but we are now in a low-growth world. Governments accordingly tried to find funding for one item by cutting the budget on others, but it is not something that has really pleased the electorate in the past 15 years. Other than increased taxes and making other countries pay for it, that leaves one final option, namely to print money. But it's pretty nuclear and has only had a very limited impact in the past years - the story of quantitative easing only benefiting the rich.

Much of this is about trying to have one's cake and eating it. This is not only a US thing but something for populist movements elsewhere too. It is upon the governments reliant on this type of populist support (including some people in the UK government) to deliver something that will halfway please this part of the electorate. And that's probably where I should stop in order to avoid dragging things too far into politics.

[bothar]

The Interstates are usually quite well maintained but state roads can be a very different story and in local terms these are often very busy and important local routes. After 3 years living in Columbus Ohio I came to think of it as the land of the rusty bridge as many seemed never to have been repainted since they were built in the early 20th century. A classic example was SR 315 running from I 270 which is the Ring Road and runs North/South through the centre of Columbus. It was in terrible shape. Having been built in the 1930's it was a classic early D2 road with extremely short sliproads and a very rough largely concrete surface bearing the scars of many decades of filled in potholes. When they eventually refurbished it in the late 1990's that work took longer than the original construction had.

I was watching an Irish TV programme on the election, where they had a lot of Americans living in Ireland in the audience. It was notable that one guy, originally from a rust belt state, used the rusty bridge as an example of how he saw things when he visited the US where his parents still lived.

Trump could perhaps do a tax deal with multinationals to repatriate their offshore profits and with that one off windfall do something on infrastructure, but then that would be logical.

[jackal]

There are no federally owned or maintained interstates. Usually they are the responsibility of the state DoT, sometimes a local authority, and occasionally by more than one state/LA (e.g. the Woodrow Wilson Bridge on the Capital Beltway is the joint responsibility of Virginia and Maryland). Construction is often (partially) federally funded, of course.

[si404]

Although the Interstates are indeed funded and managed principally by the Federal government

No they aren't. The Feds part-fund the state's highway budgets, encouraging them to use it on the National Highway System of which the Interstate network is a part, but the only roads the Feds manage are ones managed by the military or the National Parks Service. Rich states like California don't get a lot of their highway budget from the feds, poor states like Lousiana do.

The equivalent for us would be TEN-T - the UK gets 5% funding from the EU for construction projects on the network, Romania 95% funding. And the routes aren't some special thing.

[WHBM]

No they aren't. The Feds part-fund the state's highway budgets

That's why I used the word "principally". State I was familiar with they got 90% of Interstate spending from Washington, contributing just 10% themselves. Big projects like a new Interstate or new major bridge are individually negotiated. It's a system quite similar to UK funding where the central government make their own judgement of what they are going to fund and what proportion. In some cases the federal money is allotted but the state decides they are still not going to do it and thus not contribute their share of the funds.

Some may be aware that a major UK contractor has been well to the fore in earthquake-proofing several of the major bridge structures in California, at considerable cost.

If the state does hack off Washington they can just cut the funds off. This was the threat used by Washington in the 1970s when they wanted the 55mph limit everywhere. Nevada refused to do it, big distances, little traffic, but Washington then said the highway funding contribution was dependent on the 55 limit.

[KeithW]

There are no federally owned or maintained interstates. Usually they are the responsibility of the state DoT, sometimes a local authority, and occasionally by more than one state/LA (e.g. the Woodrow Wilson Bridge on the Capital Beltway is the joint responsibility of Virginia and Maryland). Construction is often (partially) federally funded, of course.

Its more complicated than that. While state DOT's carry out any work the standards for Interstate maintenance are set by the The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and any departure from these standards requires a waiver from the Federal Highway Administration. These standards include the controlled access nature of the roads which is why the intersections are built to much the same standard in every state.
The Federal government provides around 70 percent of the construction and maintenance costs of Interstate Highways primarily from the the fuel taxes levied by the federal, state, and local governments. In some states (Oklahoma for example) these are supplemented by money raised from toll highways and bridges. The Highway Trust Fund administers the revenue paid in the form of the Federal gasoline tax which since 1993 has been set at 18.4 cents per gallon.

One of the complaints of the Republicans is that the original justification of these taxes was to provide adequate funding for road maintenance and new road building but increasingly governments have been diverting funds to other programs. The last figure I saw was that only 60% of the gasoline tax revenue was being spent on the road system. In Illinois for example since 2003 the State has been diverting over 25% of the funds they received to fill the gaps in their general budget.

An amusing aside is that a small portion of US gasoline taxes are used to clean up leaking underground storage tanks, offically referred to as the LUST fund, who says bureaucrats dont have a sense of humour.

[roadtester]

Do they put up big "This new road is brought to you by the Federal Government" signs along the lines of the ones that adorn EU-supported projects in depressed regions of the UK?

Wouldn't go down to well in some states, I'm sure.

[scynthius726]

Do they put up big "This new road is brought to you by the Federal Government" signs along the lines of the ones that adorn EU-supported projects in depressed regions of the UK?

I remember driving through roadworks in Washington State where a road (I think it was an Interstate) was being widened. There were signs saying "Your tax dollars at work".

[brombeer]

Various Australian federal infrastructure programmes (national highway, Auslink, Nation Building Programme) involved mandatory signs to show that this was federal government money at work. But the animosity towards "Canberra" isn't quite the same as Smalltown USA vs Washington or UK vs EU.

[sydneynick]

And we sometimes see signs about Federal funding when there has been no visible change to the road ....

But then, my local council thinks that potholes can be fixed by spray-painting a yellow line around them.

[ScottB5411]

Being a coach driver over here, I can assure you that in most states, the highways are in terrible shape. Potholes, bridges rusting, severe rutting from trucks and intersections that need bringing up to modern standards.

[M19]

At least when a junction on the interstate network is improved, it involves free-flow connectors and it seems to work. In the UK it's normally a set of lights, some paint and more signs, and bigger queues?!

...and yet we pay many times more in motoring taxes that disappear into a massive black hole.