Why Shovel-Ready Infrastructure is Wrong (Right Now)

The term "shovel-ready"—as in, infrastructure projects that are ready or almost ready to begin—has become a favorite of policy makers in recent weeks. As the Senate gets ready to vote on a stimulus bill, it looks like the idea has stuck: The latest bill gives only projects that are able to start construction within 90 days eligibility for funding from the $90 billion set aside for infrastructure. Here is why the shovel-ready mandate could make the infrastructure crisis worse.

By Erik Sofge

(Photograph by Image Source/Getty Images)

The term arrived with all the muscle and blue-collar authority of a bulldozer: “shovel-ready.” As in, infrastructure projects that are ready or almost ready to begin, the antithesis of some dimly imagined earmark or budget-sucking bridge to nowhere. Then-president-elect Obama used the term on a December 7th visit to NBC’s Meet the Press, describing the kinds of projects that would be supported by the upcoming economic stimulus bill. Soon the phrase was being repeated by policy-makers only an almost daily basis. Now the bill is here, with one version passed by the House, and another being debated by the Senate. “Shovel-ready” isn’t language used in the bill, but the House’s version, at least, does have an enforceable short-term focus: Only projects that are able to start construction within 90 days of selection are eligible for funding from the $90 billion set aside for infrastructure.

From Buzzword to Multibillion-Dollar Policy

So what exactly is a shovel-ready project? As the Washington Post recently pointed out, the term “shovel-ready” may have been introduced in the 1990s by New York-based electric utility Niagara-Mohawk Power, which later became National Grid (it is the current owner of the URL shovelready.com). There are no specific parameters or requirements that define shovel readiness. But according to civil engineers, the idea behind this new buzzword could help scuttle the stimulus bill’s highly publicized, though secondary, goal of infrastructure reform. At issue is that 90-day restriction stipulated by Congress, an even narrower window than the bill’s original 180-day limit. “They’re well intentioned, and they know their infrastructure sucks, so they’re trying to do immediate reactive management to what is a very deep, endemic problem,” says Robert Bea, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. “If you want to patch some potholes in the road, this is a good program. But if you’re hoping for anything long-term with this approach, throw away all hope. It can’t happen.”

The programs that would meet the bill’s 90-day restriction are, for the most part, an unappealing mix of projects that were either shelved after being fully designed and engineered, and have since become outmoded or irrelevant, or projects with limited scope and ambition. No one’s building a smart electric grid or revamping a water system on 90 days notice. The best example of a shovel-ready project, and what engineers believe could become the biggest recipient of the transportation-related portion of the bill’s funding, is road resurfacing—important maintenance work, but not a meaningful way to rein in a national infrastructure crisis. “In developing countries, there are roads that are so bad, they create congestion, because drivers are constantly forced to slow down,” says David Levinson, an associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s civil engineering department. “That’s not the case here. If the road’s a little bit rougher, drivers will feel it, but that’s not going to cause you to go any slower. So the economic benefit of those projects is pretty low.”

That might be acceptable to people focused purely on fostering rapid job growth‹but, ironically, such stimulus spending could fall short on that measure, as well. “In the 1930s, when you were literally building with shovels, that might have made sense. That was largely unskilled labor. Today, it’s blue collar, but it’s not unskilled,” Levinson says. “The guy brushing the asphalt back and forth is unskilled, but the guy operating the steamroller isn’t. And there’s an assumption out there that construction workers are interchangeable between residential and highway projects. But a carpenter isn’t a whole lot of help in building a road.”

Up a Creek Without a Shovel

Even if the engineers are wrong, and a new wave of smoothly paved roads and bridges does somehow bolster the economy, politicians will eventually have to come to terms with the dangerous legacy of shovel-ready thinking, which has helped shape the current infrastructure crisis. The 90-day stipulation rules out projects already under construction. And in order to begin replacing or overhauling one of the country’s thousands of structurally deficient bridges, transportation officials might be forced to resort to hastily planned projects. “Unfortunately the approach is a quick fix, and it’s what we’ve been doing for decades. It’s a patch-and-play approach to solving our infrastructure needs,” says Pat Natale, executive director of the American Society of Civil Engineers, who supports a mix of shovel-ready and longer-term projects. “We need to come up with an overall plan to handle all of it. If there’s congestion somewhere, look at the transportation needs. Maybe that means putting in more transit lines or light rail. What is the overall plan for transportation in that region, not just in that municipality?”

Transportation arguably isn’t even the most pressing infrastructure issue—during last year’s spring floods, dozens were killed and millions of acres of crops were lost throughout the Midwest. Bea, who visited breached levees in the region immediately after the floods, noted a pervasive pattern: levees weakened by pipelines or roads. Each project must have seemed perfectly worthwhile and manageable when it was constructed. But there was no oversight, no analysis of how one infrastructure system could leave another vulnerable. “Each of these 90-day wonders might fix one thing really well. But what if, in the process, you mess up the two that are connected to it?” Bea says. At a time when engineers are calling for careful study of the relationship among different infrastructure systems, and long-term planning and construction to prevent areas like California’s Sacramento delta from suffering catastrophic levee failures, shovel-ready thinking might be worse than a distraction. Because whatever a 90-day project does or doesn’t do, it’s not going to solve complex, and sometimes life-threatening, problems.

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