The Great Depression stimulated America’s first major investments in modern infrastructure. Undertakings like the Hoover Dam, LaGuardia Airport, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Golden Gate Bridge, and thousands of lesser-known road, rail, sewer, waterway, levee, and energy projects put millions of people back to work and transformed the American landscape. These marvels of American 20th-century infrastructure have long since ceded pride of place to European and Asian 21st-century state-of-the-art projects. Today, New Deal–era and even older assets barely keep the United States moving; many, if not most of them, have long since passed their useful lifespans.
The Great Recession brought the country to another crossroads on infrastructure. But where the New Deal went full throttle on innovation, President Barack Obama’s Rooseveltian instincts were curbed by 21st-century economic realities, obsession with deficits, and Republican intransigence. Most of the hundreds of billions in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) projects went to aid for cash-strapped states and to tax cuts for the middle class, not to long-term infrastructure. To stave off economic Armageddon, getting people back to work fast was the prime directive and shovel-ready was the mantra. “Timely, targeted, and temporary” meant uncomplicated highway projects. According to Casey Dinges of the American Society of Civil Engineers, only about $100 billion went to infrastructure, and about half of that went to transportation.
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