Call For Boost to Infrastructure Investment

Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell is championing rebuilding of the U.S. aging infrastructure. It is easy, especially in tough economic times, for legislators to push aside infrastructure initiatives, including basic maintenance and repair, in favor of issues that seem more pressing or more appealing. Such neglect misses the point that infrastructure spending is a thoughtful and wise investment, a crucial investment in the nation’s future – and it is an excellent source of high-value jobs. Governor Rendell is quoted as follows:

“When I took over as governor, I was told that Pennsylvania lead the nation in the number of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges. We had more than 5,600 of them, so I put a ton of money into bridge repair. We more than tripled the amount of capital budget from $200 million a year to $700 million per year. I got a special appropriation from the Legislature to do $200 million a year extra for the next four years. Well, the good news is that we repaired a lot of bridges. The bad news is that by the end of my 6^th term [as governor], the end of 2008, the number of deficient or structurally obsolete bridges had gone from 5,600 to more than 6,000. The reason is that we [Pennsylvania] led the nation in bridges 75 years or older, and the recommended life span for a bridge is 40 years. So, every time we fixed two, three would bump on to the list.”

Similar investment must be made in the state of Washington to update and rebuild this State’s aging infrastructure.

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