Obama Promotes Ambitious Plan to Overhaul Nation’s Infrastructure

At the end of a week absorbed by social issues like gun control and gay rights, the president returned to the economic challenges he has called his top priorities with a set of proposals to generate money for construction projects.

“What are we waiting for?” Mr. Obama asked, surrounded by massive cranes and cargo containers. “There’s work to be done. There are workers who are ready to do it. Let’s prove to the world that there’s no better place to do business than right here in the United States of America, and let’s get started rebuilding America.”

Expanding on ideas from his first term and this year’s State of the Union address, Mr. Obama proposed a series of tax breaks and loans to stimulate private investment. Among other things, new “America Fast Forward Bonds” would help state and local governments borrow money for projects, while foreign pension and retirement funds would have a tax penalty eliminated so they could invest in infrastructure in the United States on a similar basis as American funds. Grant programs that were part of the president’s stimulus program would be expanded by $4 billion.

Mr. Obama also promoted an infrastructure bank that would use $10 billion in public money to leverage private investment, a concept he has been pushing without success since 2011.

Republicans responded by saying they also wanted to upgrade American roads, bridges and other infrastructure, but only if it could be paid for. SpeakerJohn A. Boehner’s office distributed comments he made last month after Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address.

“It’s easy to go out there and be Santa Claus and talk about all the things you want to give away,” Mr. Boehner said. “But at some point, somebody has to pay the bill.”

Infrastructure has been one of Mr. Obama’s favorite talking points because its appeal often crosses party lines. Both labor unions and corporations favor more spending on airports, highways and the like, and both Republican and Democratic lawmakers are eager for projects in their districts.

Ken Orski, the editor of Innovation NewsBriefs, a transportation newsletter, said the president’s emphasis on private investment was important. “We need more of that kind of involvement, rather than exclusive emphasis on public financing,” he said.

In some ways, expanding private investment in such projects is a return to tradition, said Mr. Orski, a transportation official under PresidentsRichard M. NixonandGerald R. Ford. Going back to the 19th century, canals and toll roads were financed with private money, he noted. But the great flow of government spending during the New Deal and the creation of the Interstate highway system shifted assumptions.

So while some industries like freight rail, telecommunications and aviation have depended largely on private investment, other infrastructure financing has come largely from government sources. Now that sensibility is shifting again, with more private money in the past 20 years.

“Many people feel that the role of private capital in infrastructure has been de-emphasized too much and that more balance should be restored to the equation,” Mr. Orski said.

The latest national report card issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers this month on the state of bridges, roads, power grids, rail networks and other systems showed that the country’s grade had actually risen for the first time — but to a D-plus from a D. The group credited an increase of private investment and spending from Mr. Obama’s stimulus program.

PortMiami is in the midst of $2 billion in improvements, including a tunnel directly linking its facilities with the Interstate highway system. Workers are also dredging to provide access to larger vessels, reconnecting the port with the nation’s rail system, upgrading its cranes and strengthening its bulkheads. Some of the cost has been financed with federal loans.

“The Port of Miami is a tremendous example of how infrastructure investment can lead to economic prosperity,” said Gregory E. DiLoreto, president of the engineers’ society.

On Thursday, Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, chided Mr. Obama during a conference call with reporters for following the lead of states like Florida.

“We’re certainly glad President Obama’s coming to the Port of Miami tomorrow,” Mr. Scott said, “but he’s late to the party on Florida port investments.” He said his administration had fronted part of the federal cost of the PortMiami project when Washington dawdled. “We could not wait for the federal government to come to the table with their share of the project,” he said

Peter Baker reported from Miami, and John Schwartz from New York.

Today's Economist: Uwe E. Reinhardt: The Mid-20th Century Infrastructure of the U.S.

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times An Amtrak train navigates a turn near Baltimore.

Uwe E. Reinhardt is an economics professor at Princeton.

Europeans visiting the Northeastern United States – and many parts of the East Coast — can show their children what Europe’s infrastructure looked like during the 1960s.

Perspectives from expert contributors.

In New York, they can take taxis bumping over streets marked by potholes. European children might find it funny. They can descend into a dingy and grimy underground world to ride New York City’s quaint and screeching subway system, if they can figure out where trains go.

They can take the children for a ride with Amtrak from New York to the nation’s capital, giggling as the train slowly heaves and rolls, often in fits and starts, along the rickety tracks. Passengers can be heard joking that the Navy trains its sailors on this railway system, because anyone who can make it through two or three cars without bumping into seated passengers or spilling food on them is fit to go to sea.

If they departed from Pennsylvania Station in New York, they would not have known until 5 to 10 minutes before departure from which track the train would leave. And it might not leave on time. In their home country, the children would have learned that the track from which a train departs is printed in the train schedule. It is the same every day.

At Pennsylvania Station, hundreds of passengers wait in suspense for the announcement of the track and dash to it in a mad rush, running along the train in a frantic search for a seat. In Europe, one would have booked a seat in a rail car that stops at a spot shown on a poster on the track.

Unlike Europe or Asia, where trains typically adhere to the minute to scheduled times, the departure times in Amtrak’s schedules merely represent a promise that the train will not leave before then. The actual getaway might be many minutes or even more than an hour after the scheduled departure time, with any of dozens of different excuses offered. Brakes on the train stuck. Signal switches malfunctioned. Electricity was not available to the train for some reason. A train ahead, on the same track, broke down. And so on.

Arriving at a destination on time, something Europeans take largely for granted, is relatively rare on Amtrak. Furthermore, the train in Europe or Asia is likely to have traveled at much higher speed. The tracks there are so smooth that one could easily carry an open cup of coffee along several cars or work on the computer.

Why and how Americans, who pride themselves on being fussy consumers, have put up with this mid-20th-century rail system is a mystery.

Even more wondrous than the archaic subway and rail system and the potholes in the streets is the system of distributing electric power to households and factories in large parts of the Northeastern United States. Power is often still carried on lines that hang in graceful catenaries of various depths from poles that lean left or right randomly but rarely stand straight. And which are vulnerable to powerful storms, like Hurricane Sandy.

When a German high-school classmate visited me, we came upon the intersection below, less than a mile from the center of Princeton, N.J. My friend burst out laughing at the abundance of wires in every direction, something he had seen only on his travels to the developing world.

Uwe E. Reinhardt

In my youth, electric power in Germany’s countryside, where I grew up, was carried on power lines strung from very tall and straight poles. But for decades now, power lines have been buried underground in Germany and most of the rest of Europe.

Malte Lehming, opinion-page editor of the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel, noted in his essay “Welcome to America. Take a Number” in The New York Times:

I spent half a day hunting for a store with flashlights in stock, because a storm had knocked out our power. In five decades in Germany I have never experienced a single power failure, because the power lines are usually underground and well maintained.

Imagine that – life without power failures! In much of the Northeastern United States – and perhaps in many other parts of the country as well – lengthy power disruptions are part of the American way of life. In Princeton, they occur somewhere in the township after almost every thunderstorm or snowstorm, as branches snap from trees and take down vulnerable power lines.

Last fall, for example, after a brief storm dumped wet snow on trees, many parts of New Jersey, Princeton included, were without power for about a week. Parts of Connecticut were without power for more than two weeks.

In 1958, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith drew attention to America’s neglect of its infrastructure in his famous book, “The Affluent Society.” Alas, his call for a better balance between private and public infrastructure has gone largely unheeded in this country in the ensuing half-century.

Our country reminds me of the old tale of a frog that allowed itself to be cooked to death after it was put in a pan of cold water that was very gradually heated to the boiling point. Although apparently there is no scientific basis for that tale — biologists say the frog would jump out — we do seem to act like that frog, as our infrastructure ever-so-gradually steadily decays around us.

Instead of setting about to bring our infrastructure up to 21st-century standards – which might, alas, involve more of the much detested public-sector investment — we angrily and yet meekly suffer for days or weeks without light, heat and transportation, verbally shaking our fists at the power companies but leaving it at that.

We are, at most, prepared to stock our households with flashlights and candles and, if we have the money, buy portable generators that can produce a modest amount of electricity, albeit at great expense. How can this be an efficient way of bringing electric power to households?

In so many ways the United States is a great country. The American people are innovative and hard-working, more so than most Europeans. It amazes me that they put up so fatalistically with this old-fashioned and decaying infrastructure.

Letters: Letters: Repair the Infrastructure, or Pay More Later

To the Editor:

In “The Big Myth of Painful Choices” (Economic View, Sept. 23), Robert H. Frank suggested that the nation’s economic decisions may not be difficult if approached with “solid evidence and common sense.” Nowhere does this apply more than in upgrading our infrastructure.

Mr. Frank’s view that delaying this work only adds to the cost is valid. Any homeowner understands the issue: If those cracks in the asphalt driveway are filled, the driveway will last much longer. If they’re not filled, freeze-thaw cycles and normal erosion will cause premature failure.

Several states have recognized that it pays to designate specific lanes on toll roads for drivers willing to pay premiums to avoid rush-hour congestion. This isn’t an elitist solution. After all, every car paying the premium takes a car off the regular toll road. And inviting the private sector to participate in infrastructure improvements, using its expertise and innovations to garner profits while serving road-weary travelers, has paid off in many states.

Although many infrastructure projects are “shovel ready,” many first require much engineering and design. But unless someone in government opens the starting gate, we can look forward only to higher long-term costs.

Sidney M. Levy

Baltimore, Sept. 23

The writer is author of “Public-Private Partnerships: Case Studies on Infrastructure Development.”

Letters for Sunday Business may be sent to sunbiz@nytimes.com.