Economics of Green Roadways
At the end of the day, one question always comes up when discussing transportation projects: What will it cost?
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Economics of Green Roadways
At the end of the day, one question always comes up when discussing transportation projects: What will it cost? In the United States, all levels of government combined spent approximately $3.5 trillion on highways, roads, and local streets between 1945 and 2010. Although that may seem like a decent amount of money, the increase in travel during that same period was so great that most of the capacity and redundancy planned when the system was built has been used up (AASHTO, 2007). Not only do we need to build new roads, we also need to revamp many of our existing roadways and bridges that have experienced years of neglect and are badly in need of repair. Although a very concerning problem, this also means there are numerous opportunities to build new green roadways. Transportation projects are expensive, and it will be difficult to pay for all of the improvements that need to be made. Funding expected to be allocated for federal and state highways is not even sufficient to maintain existing facilities, much less construct new ones. One significant reason for the current fiscal problems is increased highway construction and right-of-way acquisition costs. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimated that the highway cost construction index increased 63 percent between 2002 and 2007.
In 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated that $2.2 trillion had to be invested over five years to bring the nation’s transportation infrastructure up to a good condition (ASCE, 2009). The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s report, “Determining Performance and Accountability Challenges and High Risks” (2000) concluded that the current federal transportation funding system “poses challenges to introducing performance and accountability for results” into federal highway programs. In June 2010, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said, “In Washington, we all know what needs to be done in transportation. We need to find $500 billion.” LaHood suggested that “the federal government needs to look beyond traditional means” to fund a transportation bill (Cassiday, 2010). The year before, President Barack Obama emphasized the importance of shoring up the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, but warned that the mounting federal deficit would require “more creative, new approaches to financing” investment in transit, bridges, and road repairs. One problem is that our total public spending on transport and infrastructure has fallen steadily since the 1960s. In 2011 it was at 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP); in contrast, Europe invests 5 percent of its GDP and China invests 9 percent. This isn’t a new problem; the United States has been spending a much smaller percentage of its GDP than European
J.L. Sipes and M.L. Sipes, Creating Green Roadways: Integrating Cultural, Natural, and Visual Resources into Transportation, DOI 10.5822/978-1-59726-322-1_11, © 2013 James L. Sipes and Matthew L. Sipes
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countries for the last fifty years or so. In compari
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