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Business View Magazine
32 Business View – October
Construction
highway funding has stagnated over the years and we,
for example, with the last highway bill, we had many
extensions. I think it was eleven. Historically, since
1956, the highway bill has been renewed, reauthorized
and re-funded every five or six years. The downside of
living on extensions is that it basically holds the funding
at current levels. Material costs, labor costs go up, but
the funding doesn’t.
What has happened is that the state agencies – these
are the DOTs or the highway departments of all these
various states around the country – they actually have
less money and real dollars. So they and the industry
are tasked to do more with less, and it is a real challenge
because the demands on the roadway increase every
year. There are more highway and roadway users.
And, of course, we look at airports and streets and
roads as well, but across all of these facilities, we’re using
them more. That means that there’s more congestion,
there’s more traffic, more wear and tear, and as a
consequence, there are more road user delays, which
cost business and industry. They create huge safety
issues and inordinate delays.
There’s an acknowledgment among many experts in
the industry that we simply need to invest money for
the long term in restoring and rehabilitating, preserving,
but also strategically constructing new highways and
roadways. But because of the funding issue and the
gridlock inWashington, D.C., that funding has been very
hard to get put into motion. And what we’re pushing
for, what we’re advocating for, what our members
want, is a long-term well-funded highway built.
One other aspect of this is that the primary funding
mechanism that goes to federal aid highway programs
is the Highway Trust Fund, and people in Congress,
people in the industry, people in the agencies
will all agree that the Highway Trust Fund is badly
broken – it’s about to run out of money. Congress
is debating a short-term solution to that, but what
we’re hoping is that they will develop a longer-term
perspective on this and a longer-term solution.
Because what is in place now isn’t working, and
there are some very serious issues that are tied
to this. Not only will 700,000 people be out of
work if they don’t fix that trust fund, but we’ll also
see business and commerce impacted. We will see
our stature in the world market decline. The short
answer is that we want to see a federal aid highway
program enacted on a long-term basis with the
requisite funding to get out there and do the job
that needs to get done.
BV: As far as your membership, and
ways that you as an association go about
engaging them, what sorts of things have
worked or resonated most often – is it
events? Is it publications?
DAVENPORT:
All of the above. We do
publications – although, recently, we’ve been
keeping pace with the digital age and are producing
a lot of technical information in terms of web apps
and online information. We have workshops and
