Infrastructure Investments and Global Competitiveness

The past Thursday evening I was at a Northern New Jersey Urban Land Institute (ULI) meeting where, Bob Dunphy, ULI Senior Resident Fellow for Transportation and Infrastructure, gave a fascinating presentation on infrastructure investment in the United States and around the world. Its incredible how much money China is pouring into new infrastructure projects including high speed rail, airports and local infrastructure. Its also quite astonishing how much deferred maintenance has built up in the U.S. and how large the capital deficits are becoming on our core infrastructure. This has been a challenge in the U.S. since the 1980s and continues to get worse and worse. According to Mr. Dunphy the Federal Highway Trust is going to be bankrupt by 2009 under current policy and funding trends.

Where I live in Northern New Jersey and New York, there are many pressing infrastructure needs such as expanding commercial air capacity, improving freight movement, building commute corridors and strengthening the electrical grid and power supply. This got me thinking how foresighted Metro Denver has been in terms of core infrastructure investment over the last decade or so. Here are a few examples I came up with along with the rough costs of the projects (not in consistent year dollars):

• Building Denver International Airport (DIA) from scratch in the 1980s and early 1990s. The current plans to expand the terminal, build more gates, add rail transport etc. ($5.2 billion + $1.2 billion) See my July 30, 2007 blog entry (http://aviewoftherockies.blogspot.com/2007/07/dia-expansion-fullfilling-vision.html).
• The innovative transportation expansion (T-REX) project which jointly expanded light rail and the I-25 freeway along the same right of way ($1.67 billion);
• The ambitious FasTracks program, over 12 years, to construct 137 miles of new commuter rail, light rail and bus rapid transit service throughout the Denver Metro Area.($6.1 billion);
• The November 2007 infrastructure bond package approved by the voters at the City and County of Denver ($550 Million).

As Metro Areas around the world compete with each other for footloose talent, capital, businesses and jobs, having world-class infrastructure is a key source of competitive advantage. The Metro Denver Area is on a solid path of maintaining and improving its infrastructure and needs to continue moving in this direction in the coming years and decades. This is an issue I hope to follow closely in A View of the Rockies.