Via AASHTO Journal

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told the Transportation Research Board's annual meeting the nation needs to get beyond a short-term focus and repeated funding crises, to take a long-term view of how to prepare infrastructure for evolving demands that require action to head off problems in future decades.

"Let's just be honest: We've been moving from crisis to crisis" on funding infrastructure, Foxx said in his Jan. 12 keynote speech at the conference. He said in his 18 months as secretary Washington has seen budget sequestration, a government shutdown and a "highway cliff, part one" in last summer's near insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund.

Now, he said, "we may be facing part two" with a May 31 deadline fast approaching to replenish the trust fund again.

But Foxx told the TRB that a broader problem is a lack of long-term planning across different parts of the transportation network to guide project decisions. "In a real sense, our transportation system hasn't caught up to the 21^st Century." He joked that "we've been planning like it's 1975."

To read more, please click on the link above.