Growing wear and tear on our nation's roads have left 43% of our public roadways in poor or mediocre condition.

There are more than 617,000 bridges across the United States. Currently, 42% of all bridges are at least 50 years old, and 46,154, or 7.5% of the nation’s bridges, are considered structurally deficient, meaning they are in “poor” condition. Unfortunately, 178 million trips are taken across these structurally deficient bridges every day.

There are over 91,000 dams in the country that serve many purposes... The Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimates the number of deficient high-hazard-potential dams now exceeds 2,300. Meanwhile, approximately 3% of dams supply households and businesses with hydroelectric power, and many of these dams are privately owned by utilities and follow a rigorous operations and maintenance schedule.

When the coronavirus pandemic forced millions of Americans to stay home in 2020 and 2021, an estimated one in five school-aged children lacked the high-speed internet connection needed to access lessons and other materials.

We’re still just paying about half of our infrastructure bill – and the total investment gap has gone from $2.1 trillion over 10 years to $2.59 trillion over 10 years.

Our nation’s drinking water infrastructure system is made up of 2.2 million miles of underground pipes. There is a water main break every two minutes, and an estimated 6 billion gallons of treated water lost each day in the U.S.

The impervious surfaces in cities and suburbs are also expanding, exacerbating urban flooding, which results in $9 billion in damages annually. Stormwater also affects water quality as polluted runoff from pavement enters water bodies. Nearly 600,000 miles of rivers and streams and more than 13 million acres of lakes, reservoirs, and ponds are considered impaired. Federal funding, though up in recent years, averages about $250 million annually, which leaves a growing annual funding gap of $8 billion just to comply with current regulations. With few dedicated funding sources, complicated governance and ownership structures, expansive networks of aging assets, increasingly stringent water quality regulations, and concerning climate change projections, the expected performance of stormwater systems is declining. Many of the country’s legacy stormwater systems, are struggling with the high cost of retrofits needed to address urban flooding and climate change.

The nation’s more than 16,000 wastewater treatment plants are functioning, on average, at 81% of their design capacities, while 15% have reached or exceeded it. In 2019, though the annual water infrastructure capital investment gap was $81 billion.

Approximately 140,000 rail miles are operated by freight’s Class I, II, and III railroads. Amtrak operates over a 21,400-mile network, 70% of which is owned by other railroads, also known as host track. Along our nation’s busiest passenger rail corridor, the Northeast Corridor, infrastructure-related issues caused 328,000 train-delay minutes, or the equivalent of roughly 700 Northeast Regional train trips from Boston, Massachusetts, to Washington, D.C.

Poster Comment:

The total infrastructure deficit is $4.59 trillion. The US has set aside $2.1 trillion for infrastructure so we need an additional $2.49 trillion by 2030 which $2.49 T divided by 9 or $276.67 Billion per year. A lot of the money we spend comes from private sources and from dedicated taxes. That money is counted under planned spending. Biden has proposed spending $153 billion on infrastructure. But $20 billion will be spent to tear down racist roads. So he is actually spending $133 billion repairing infrastructure.