Editorial: Money alone not enough

Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007 | 7:04 a.m.

The tragic collapse in Minneapolis last week of the city's main bridge over the Mississippi River inspired politicians and commentators all over the country to call for increased funding of the nation's infrastructure.

We joined them Sunday, in an editorial calling on Congress to appropriate billions for bridges, roads, water projects and other infrastructure known to be in need of repairs.

But money alone is not going to solve the urgent problem before us. As a Newhouse News Service analysis on Monday pointed out, the whole system we have for assessing infrastructure priorities and appropriating money to address them is antiquated and needs wholesale change.

Typically, infrastructure repairs begin with a local government or regional commission assessing the need and appealing to the state or federal government for funding. States have their own repair lists and apply for federal highway funding.

Three forces then take over: time, bureaucracy and politics.

The Newhouse analysis pointed out that such a system does not result in the most urgent projects getting the funding. "The problem is the lack of any comprehensive, rational system," wrote Katherine Reynolds Lewis, who covers financial and work-related issues. "Three separate federal laws authorize money for airports, highways and water, and different jurisdictions squabble over whose piece of pie is bigger ."

With no system in place to establish true priorities, problems other than safety present themselves, Lewis wrote. She noted that congestion, which could be nearly eliminated with proper engineering, costs $50 billion a year in wasted time and also wastes 1.8 billion gallons of fuel a year.

She also noted that the primary funding source for highway infrastructure is the federal gasoline tax, which hasn't been raised in 14 years. Meanwhile, she wrote, construction costs can escalate by as much as 75 percent a year.

The Senate last week voted to create a national commission to assess infrastructure needs. If it is created, as we think it should be, a whole new system of assessing needs and raising and granting funding should be one of its main areas of study.