The Great Highway Hold-Up
18 Construction Equipment Distribution www.cedmag.com September 2009 Management It's not pleasant to think about, but imagine that a commercial airliner loaded with passengers was crashing in the United States every week. Americans would be appalled by the carnage and demand govern-ment action. The president and members of Congress would probably be climbing over each other to appear the most responsive to the public outrage. It may not be passenger jets falling out of the sky, but the consequences of our nation's collective failure in the area of surface transportation infrastructure are just as dramatic. A recent study commissioned by the Transportation Construction Coalition (TCC) (of which AED is a leading member) found that poor road conditions were a factor in more than half (52.7 percent) of the 42,000 traffic fatalities in U.S. each year. In other words, more than 400 people considerably more than the number of passengers on a Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 die in this country each week because of poor road conditions. Our failure to invest in highways also has significant economic conse-quences. In early July, the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) reported that traffic congestion, resulting in large part from inadequate road capacity, costs the country $87.2 billion per year in wasted time and fuel. The total amount of wasted fuel topped 2.8 billion gallons, about three weeks' worth of gas for every traveler; The Great Highway Hold-Up By chrIstIan a. kleIn anD danIel fIsher