ERMUSR Misc Issues 06-06-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I N F R A S TRU C'I' UR~E" "S~I1~1ViYT`. ~ ~ ` ~: (continued from page 1) that the issue of decaying infrastructure becomes a national priority. We anticipate task committees, program management to measure progress, andjoint leadership in going to the Hill and to industries to help us move forward." In his keynote address, Mineta recog- nized the seriousness of the nation's infra- structure crisis and the need for the public and private sectors to work together to find solutions. "With the growing recognition that our transportation trust funds are on an unsustainable course, what we see gather- ing is the perfect storm," he warned. "This has prompted some serious thinking and rethinking about the ways that America plans, builds, finances, and maintains our vast and vital transportation network. We face serious challenges in finding a cleaner, rnore fuel efficient way to power the trans- portation system that has made America the most mobile society in the world. But we also face challenges in fighting the traf- fic that chokes our cornmunities and cities. This troubling phenomenon is not limited to roads and highways; the pattern is being repeated in crowded airports and in our congested skyways and freight backups that have becorne the weak link in our supply chain." The 3.5 billion hours each year I that U.S. motorists spend stuck in traffic carry a dollar value of more than $63 bil- lion, according to nsc1:'s 2005 Report Card for America's Infrastructure. Moreover, air travel and traffic are expected to increase by more than 4 percent each year over the next decade. The secretary of transportation also emphasized the importance of establishing partnerships between the public and private sectors. "I see the embracing of the private sector as the future, not just for highways but for our broader transportation network," he said. ""The expanded freedom that fol- lows the private sector's evolving role is not a blank check. As of October of last year, nearly eleven billion dollars' worth of road projects [had] been completed using public/ private partnerships. States that adopt pub- lic/private partnerships are getting far more than an infusion of cash. These partnerships are also bringing more responsiveness and consistent users (and arc] helping to direct investment resources, and in the most criti- cal projects they are lowering the cost of repairing and maintaining infrastructure over time and even accelerating the deploy- ment of technologies." Asked what nscs could do to improve the current state of the nation's transporta- tion systems, Mineta responded as follows: "There's no question that nscs has the capability to develop] new ideas in terms of what can be done. All of you are not only idea people, but you're also practical in the sense of knowing what has to be done and what works. So nscr: can be part of the innovative discussion and provoke new ideas in policy, and I would say nscE should continue to do what it has been doing through its committee structures and state societies." During an awards lutrcheon that day, James Glymph, the winner of cEer's 2006 In his April 15 address to attendees at the infra- structure conference, Felix G. Rohatyn, a former U.S. ambassador to France and a cochair of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Commission on Public Infrastructure, outlined a legislative proposal he has been developing that would create a national investment corporation for infrastructure. Henry L. Michel Award for Industry Advancement of Research, discussed the benefits of implementing three-dimen- sional computer modeling in construction and lauded innovation as an essential factor in improving the nation's infrastructure. "What we do in the next ten years will be the last of what we do with fossil fuels," he said. "Our infrastructure is in much worse shape than Europe's, much worse shape than Japan's, and China is moving very fast. For us to stay competitive we have to do something about this problem, but we do not need to design infrastructure for the twentieth century; we need to design it for the twenty-first, and that is going to be a hard thing to figure out." Rohatyn, who served as the U.S. ambassador to France from 1997 to 2000, seconded Glymph's assessment of infra- structure in Europe: "Whether it's their high-speed trains, whether it's their air- ports, whether it's their roads or the way they run their cities, European infrastruc- ture, which is financed by the European Investment Bank by selling long-term bonds to the public, is a perfectly won- derful system," he said. "And yet we are supposed to be the leaders of the world in terms of technology and wealth. But if tomorrow something goes wrong in Long Beach, you're going to have boats parked halfway across the Pacific Ocean." As chairman ofthe Municipal Assistance Corporation in the late 1970s, Rohatyn managed the negotiations that enabled New York City to weather a financial cri- sis. In his remarks he described a legislative proposal he has been developing that woulc{ create a national investment corporation for infrastructure. "We can certainly finance it if we have the political will and it's prop- erly constructed," said Rohatyn, who is the president of Rohatyn Associates, rrc, of New York City, a cochair of the Cen- ter for Strategic and International Studies'