As I write, President Biden has announced a few more details of what is being called an “infrastructure bill” to be considered by Congress. While many important details remain to be clarified, the spending priorities are disappointing both for what is overemphasized and what is absent. It’s also telling that the announced $2 trillion price tag includes many billions for investments that have nothing to do with the nation’s physical plant.
Here are the top 10 priorities, ranked by estimated price tag. In the absence of a detailed proposal, I’m using CNN’s reporting as my source.
1) Home care, including allowing home health aides to unionize $400 billion
2) ~2 million housing units built/retrofitted $213 billion
3) Electric vehicle incentives and investments $174 billion
4) Roads/bridges $135 billion
5) Water mains and pipes $111 billion
6) Remediate/repair school buildings $100 billion
7) Broadband, including urban and rural connectivity $100 billion
8) Workforce development $100 billion
9) Mass transit $85 billion
10) Amtrak $80 billion
Airports are far down the list, at $25 billion, near “inland waterways” at $17 billion.
In a traditional reading of “infrastructure” as shared underpinnings for public transit, connectivity, and commerce, only items 4, 5, 7, 9, and 10 really qualify. (Schools are traditionally a local phenomenon, funded by property and other taxes, possibly with an assist from the state.) These traditional infrastructure items, were they isolated, would cost about a quarter of what is being proposed, at $511 billion.
Many items are clearly part of a commitment to righting historic inequalities: improving housing options for low- and moderate-income families is a policy goal, but how do these housing units count as infrastructure? Similarly, raising the wages and ideally the skills of home-health aides improves their lot in life, but what’s in it for the cared-for? Finally, workforce development is a perennial budget item but what exactly does this mean? Note that Google has recently launched an online certification program to equip people for jobs at one of more than 150 participating companies — no college degree required. Is job reskilling best considered as a federal priority, or maybe it’s better addressed at the state level, where job losses and employment needs can be viewed more specifically and with less overhead. In short, economic justice initiatives are important enough to debate on their merits on a case-by-case basis, not be smuggled in under false labeling.
How widely shared are the benefits of these investments? 2 million housing units will certainly improve life for maybe 8-10 million individuals, and there will be some spillover effects as nearby property values should benefit from the investment. Even assuming a 2-for-1 neighbors:residents multiplier, that still only gets us to about 25-30 million beneficiaries, or less than 10% of the US population. Air travel is an expensive purchase, meanwhile, and I couldn’t find statistics for what percent of U.S. citizens took a flight in 2019, but 811 million flight-seats were occupied by U.S. citizens in that year. If we know that the average U.S. adult flew 2.5 times in 2017, and that kids represent a minority of air travelers, that puts the direct beneficiaries of a robust airline network in the 40% range of the population. Yet housing (by definition, not shared) is slated to receive about 9x the funding allocated to airports (a classic infrastructure play, albeit not a green one).
Let’s look at the heavy commitment to electric vehicles. At one level, this feels close to the failed federal investment in the Solyndra solar-panel startup. How much will Washington once again attempt to pick winners? Depending on the day, Elon Musk might be the richest person in the world: private markets are investing heavily in electric vehicles, last I saw. Counting federal purchasing mandates, which are already underway in the new USPS delivery vehicle (which has both urban/electric and rural/internal combustion variants), the Biden plan allocates $220 billion to electric vehicles. Is there any doubt the market will swing that way? Reinstating the fuel-economy standards previously relaxed by the Trump administration would be more stick than carrot, and cost less. Meanwhile, the version of the proposal that I saw, that seeks 500,000 charging stations by 2030, made no mention of the electric grid. Both the proposed charging stations and the electric utilities’ role in western wildfires focus attention on the nation’s electrical infrastructure, which, like the water supply, desperately needs both modernization and hardening against terrorist attacks.
Let’s turn from means to ends. Concepts of micro mobility (bikes and e-bikes), “15-minute cities” including Paris and Ottawa, and civic commitments to outdoor recreation in places like Asheville and Duluth all reflect a vision of urban life as something very different from car-dependent sprawl. Given that the global pace of urban migration continues to accelerate, a serious infrastructure bill should be building the foundations of the city of tomorrow, not yesterday. Sure electric cars have a better carbon footprint than internal combustion vehicles — assuming the electric car isn’t charged by a coal-fired facility. But still better are far fewer cars, and reliable mass transit: cars don't scale, nor do they give a city the life and texture cafes and strolling do. Many malls are dying: what can be done with all those millions of square feet at the same time that we revitalize central cities?
Look at the Washington, DC region, the beneficiary of heavy federal transit funding. The Metro is falling apart or flaming out while not keeping pace with population growth, at the same time that the endless highway construction has done little to reduce commute times. Where are bike lanes? (These have the double benefit of also improving health.) Where is reliable mass transit? Where is a cost-effective way to travel from Dulles airport to downtown? The Amtrak funding, meanwhile, will largely be spent in the Boston-DC corridor, which means it’s unlikely that the US will have a true high-speed rail line by 2040. Japan, meanwhile, was running 130-mph trains at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and France’s TGV service launched in 1981: that network’s trains regularly operate at 200 mph.
In short, the infrastructure bill has little to inspire “moon shot” ambition or even due diligence on known crises-in-the-making. Rather, we get more road repair, more slow trains, more monopoly broadband. The Biden administration has a moment of historic need, a less oppositional Congress, and public appetite for new and better. Looking ahead to 2050, where are the walkable, bikeable, safe U.S. cities? Where is competitively priced broadband, possibly of the municipal variety? Where is tomorrow’s electric grid? Where are the relocations of coastal communities being pushed underwater by climate change, and the rethinking of those that are next on the list (hello Houston, I see you Miami)? Speaking of water, where are hard discussions about droughts and the unsustainable water allocations in the western U.S.? Replace lead piping, absolutely, but let’s not pretend that Los Angeles can siphon off more and more of its water supply from the Colorado River indefinitely.
There is a fight brewing in Congress, and I hope both that infrastructure gets properly defined and addressed, and that some of the parties take the opportunity to look farther ahead than the already-inevitable swing to electric vehicles. Great civilizations always boast great infrastructure, and it’s time to declare ourselves one way or the other.
Posts
