A report, issue on June 27 by 45 different organizations offers way to “to regain America's infrastructure leadership and revive the country’s global competitiveness."
Entitled “Making the Grade”, the report offers six recommendations including: 1) Making infrastructure a cabinet-level priority; 2) Forming U.S. infrastructure regions; 3) Establishing a national infrastructure bank; 4) Selling “opportunity” bonds; 5) Creating a national infrastructure index and 6) Engaging the American people to build support for the importance of infrastructure policy.
The report's name is intended as a rallying cry in response to last year's quadrennial report card by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), which gave America's overall infrastructure a D+ grade. The ASCE estimates that US$3.6 trillion must be invested by 2020 to make critically needed upgrades and expansions of national infrastructure -- and avoid trillions of dollars in lost business sales, exports, disposable income and GDP.
“Our infrastructure has fallen behind the rest of the world, threatening our economic vitality and even becoming a danger to our citizens,” said Terry D. Bennett of Autodesk. “We can't rely on the same-old way of doing things. We need to bring a renewed spirit of innovation and purpose to this challenge. We believe the Making The Grade report provides the right framework, fresh ideas and infusion of energy needed to jumpstart this discussion and create action as a unified industry. We look forward to working closely between the private and public sector to start implementing our recommendations with all due haste.”