Here are 3 major steps the U.S. should take to improve its infrastructure
Natural disasters and extreme weather events are hammering America’s aging infrastructure. A new report lays out what the U.S. needs to do now to fix it, and it’s building more, better, and smarter infrastructure, from bridges, broadband, and dams to roads, levees, and parks.
The United States has made slight improvements to its infrastructure, according to the report from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a professional organization, but it still has a long ways to go, and it better pick up the pace because there are growing risks to public safety and the economy.
The ASCE gave infrastructure in the U.S. a C grade, citing forward momentum, but the U.S. faces a “substantial investment gap,” according to the report. Its authors recommended policymakers and lawmakers take three steps to close the gap: sustain their investments, prioritize resilience, and advance policy and innovation.
Sustain investment
The new rating is up from C- in the group’s most recent report, released in 2021, and the ASCE cited the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that former President Joe Biden signed into law for prompting the improved grade. More than 66,000 projects were funded by the law, including repairs and improvements to more than 196,000 miles of road and improvements to more than 1,500 airports. The group called Biden’s law “the most comprehensive federal investment in the nation’s infrastructure in U.S. history,” but said it will take time to fully come into effect.
“Recent federal and state investments have had a positive impact, but the full force of increased funding will take years to realize,” the report’s authors wrote. “Sustained investment is key to providing certainty and ensuring planning goes to development, as well as making larger infrastructure projects attainable.”
The group said after the bipartisan infrastructure law expires in 2026, Congress should maintain its investment levels.
Prioritize resilience
In addition to an overall score, the ASCE infrastructure report rated 18 individual categories, from aviation to wastewater. No category received an A rating. The highest-rated categories were ports and rail, which received a B and B-, respectively, and the lowest-rated categories were stormwater and transit, which both received Ds. The ASCE named extreme weather and disasters as pressing reasons for the U.S. to upgrade its infrastructure now.
The report’s authors said natural disasters and extreme weather events are especially damaging for America’s aging infrastructure, “creating unexpected and often avoidable risks to public safety and the economy.” They made an economic argument for building and strengthening resilient infrastructure.
“Climate-related challenges are widespread, affecting even regions previously resistant to these events: Floods become more intense and occur more often, hurricanes create higher wind loads, and wildfires encroach more unpredictably,” the authors wrote. “Investments in resilient infrastructure are consistently proven to be an effective use of limited public dollars, because they reduce costs in the long term, especially by minimizing rebuilding needs after a significant event.”
Advance policy and innovation
The ASCE said for the U.S. to raise each category to a state of good repair would cost an estimated $9.1 trillion, and improvements could save the average American family $700 a year.
The report’s authors said to get there, all levels of government should work to identify “pain points” in their permitting processes, address an engineering and construction workforce shortage, look for chances for the public and private sectors to collaborate, and leverage “proven and emerging technologies to make the best use of limited financial and personnel resources.”
The group’s next report is due in 2029, and to raise America’s infrastructure grades by then, the group “urges a comprehensive agenda that sustains investment, prioritizes resilience, and advances forward-thinking policies and innovations.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order shortly after he returned to office for a second term pausing funds from being disbursed from the infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, but a judge ruled the following month that the Trump administration had to restore the funds as Congress had appropriated them.
“Support research and development of innovative materials, technologies, and processes to modernize and extend the life of infrastructure, expedite repairs or replacements, and reduce costs into the future,” authors of the ASCE infrastructure report recommended.