2023 -The Year Of Infrastructure Reinvention

When a major stretch of 1-95 going through Philadelphia collapsed in June after a truck fire, authorities predicted it would take months to repair, rerouting massive amounts of traffic on a busy stretch of highway in one of America’s landmark cities. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PDOT) told the approximately 160,000 commuters used that road each day to find alternative routes and use public transit. It was repaired and reopened in twelve days.

This historically fast repair was accomplished by applying “emergency, no-bid contracts, around-the-clock repair crews, a guarantee from the federal government to pick up the check, and no small amount of Rust Belt ingenuity,” Bloomberg reported. They even used recycled glass for some of the fill.

The emergency funding to pay for it comes from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which is transforming America’s infrastructure – finally. It was passed by the last Congress in November 2021 under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with funds rolling out and construction expedited in 2023.

America’s infrastructure has historically gotten a D or D+ every year since 1998 from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in their annual report card. Today that grade has gone up to a C-, due in part to investments from the Infrastructure Investment Act (aka IIJA) and will likely go up as its funds repair more of the 43% of public roads that the ASCE designates as “in poor or mediocre condition” in 2024.

The Infrastructure Act fueled the biggest wins for the American infrastructure in 2023, because of how that funding will repair and modernize the whole country’s infrastructure for decades to come.

Here are a few reasons 2023 was big year for the U.S. infrastructure:

1. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: Passed with bipartisan support, these funds will fix roads and bridges ($110 billion); clean up the water systems across the country to provide clean drinking water to millions of people ($55 billion), expand broadband across the country for increased internet access ($65 billion), “modernize” public transit ($39 billion, plus $65 billion for rail system upgrades); $42 billion for upgrading ports and airports; $65 billion to transition our energy system and grid to reliable clean energy; and $7.5 billion to install 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations nationwide. There’s also $50 billion for communities to increase their resilience to extreme weather events, and $21 billion to clean up orphaned wells and superfund sites that are polluting communities.

ASCE describes the Infrastructure Act as, “The BIL is the largest-ever investment in our nation’s built environment, providing $1.2 trillion towards all 17 categories of infrastructure outlined in ASCE’s 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. The IIJA represents a significant down payment on the $2.6 trillion infrastructure investment gap over a 10-year period identified in ASCE’s Failure to Act economic study.” On the Act’s 2-year anniversary in November 2023, ASCE summarized its progress this way: “Since its passage, the IIJA has announced $400 billion in funding for more than 40,000 projects across the country, including nearly 8,000 bridge projects, 25 passenger rail projects, 190 airport terminal projects, 445 port and waterway projects, 1,200 drinking and wastewater projects, and over 60 projects dedicated to improving the resilience and reliability of the energy grid.” They also heralded that major bridge and tunnel projects, neglected for many years, were finally getting upgrades.

2. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is building a clean energy infrastructure one year in: The IRA included $369 billion to make the economy’s infrastructure carbon-free, including investments from expediting a clean energy transition, to building an EV supply chain. Dr. Vanessa Chan, Chief Commercialization Officer of the Department of Energy described the IRA in an exclusive interview on Electric Ladies Podcast as “private sector-led, government enabled.” The private sector is stepping up. “The private sector has announced more than $110 billion in new clean energy manufacturing investments, including more than $70 billion in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain and more than $10 billion in solar manufacturing,” according to the White House.

3. EV sales are growing: “Electric vehicle sales have been growing year over year, with more and more automakers entering the market and consumers showing increasing interest in sustainable mobility,” Argonne National Laboratory is reported. Acknowledging there will be “fluctuations,” they say, “the overall trend is continued growth.”

The Treasury Department announced its new policy in 2023 for qualifying for the $7,500 tax credit in the new legislation, too.

4. New tools for predicting and preparing for climate impacts: New tools are available for predicting and preparing for the impact of climate change on our cities, communities, homes, schools, and businesses in 2023. “We have now forward-looking data, data that allows us to look 30 years into the future and understand how and where we're vulnerable and what we're doing with that data. The different hazards, by the way that we have are flood, wind, drought, and wildfire,” Jessica Filante-Farrington, AT&T’s Director of Global Sustainability told me in an exclusive interview. They are now sharing that massive data with the public through their “new climate risk and resilience portal” called ClimRR, which they developed in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Argonne National Laboratory and launched in 2023.

Another climate mapping tool called CMRA was built by a coalition of government agencies to share data with the public: NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), the Department of Energy, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Health and Human Services launched one focused on health hazards due to climate issues too.

“Much of our infrastructure isn’t built to withstand certain kinds of flooding or certain levels of heat,” which come with global warming, Heather Boushey, a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors explained in an exclusive interview (she’s also Chief Economist of the Invest in America Cabinet).

She added that the new funding and incentives are designed to build a new, safer, more resilient and efficient, 21^st century infrastructure.