Cities Tax & Budget
April 18th, 2018 1 Minute Read Press Release

10 Infrastructure Projects that Deserve a Green Light

NEW YORK, NY – President Trump announced $1.5 trillion in infrastructure spending in February, opening the door to funding for many worthy projects, but also facilitating the proposals of many unnecessary projects.

While much of America’s infrastructure could benefit from investment in their maintenance and upgrades, there are highways, airports, rail links and pipelines that should be built.

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Aaron Renn outlines 10 worthy projects in a new issue brief.

The circumstances that justify new, expanded or replaced infrastructure often arise in regions that are rapidly growing in population and jobs, and:

  • where the existing infrastructure is at or over capacity and is experiencing a significant historical (not just projected) growth in demand, in a region that is growing overall;
  • where infrastructure is obsolete or nearing the end of its useful life; where the original networks did not envision the current distribution of demand, such as highway links between cities that used to be very small but now are very large; and
  • where the project costs can be recovered from user fees such as tolls

Here are 10 projects that deserve a green light, according to Renn:

Passenger Rail and Transit

1. Gateway Project (New York City and New Jersey)

2. North–South Rail Link (Boston)

Freight Rail

3. Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) program

Highways

4. I-11 link between Phoenix and Las Vegas

5. I-35 Capitol Express project (Austin)

6. SR 37 freeway improvement (Indianapolis)

7. I-345 freeway removal (Dallas)

Airports

8. Kansas City International Airport terminal improvement

9. Denver International Airport expansion

Energy

10. New England gas pipeline

Click here to read the full report.

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