With the 2024 election season rapidly approaching, Americans are due to hear about the IIJA and IRA again. The president looks to use them as key, transformative wins from his first term, and detractors will attempt to paint the legislation as wasteful spending, misaligned priorities and lacking true impact on the economy. Wherever the truth lies between the two narratives, it is worth revisiting the IIJA’s promises and actual progress from the perspective of a civil engineer, as I will attempt to do here.
A Make-or-Break Moment for American Infrastructure
On the campaign trail in 2020, President Biden consistently hammered home the point that he viewed investing in American infrastructure as a key economic driver for the middle class as the country emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic. Several months before the passage of the IIJA, the American Society of Civil Engineers released its 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, giving the nation’s infrastructure a grade of C−. Unfortunately, 11 infrastructure categories scored a D and only two were worthy of a B.
This was a slight upgrade from the D+ handed out in 2017, but should the richest country on the planet be celebrating? Bridges continued to age past their useful service lives and crumble, airports struggled to meet the nation’s travelers’ needs as post-pandemic travel boomed, lead pipes continued to pose a threat to public health in schools across the country, and public transit agencies in many cities found themselves struggling to dig out of the crippling revenue shortfall caused by the pandemic and lost ridership. With many states facing their own funding shortfalls due to lost tax revenue during the pandemic, the Biden administration felt there was a mandate for action at the federal level and produced what it believed would ultimately become the most consequential infrastructure act since the New Deal.
In the end, the president and Congress were able to hammer out an infrastructure package worth $1.2 trillion over the next decade with an ambitious goal of creating 1.5 million jobs per year during the same time frame. Clearly, it is an ambitious vision. The American Society of Civil Engineers doesn’t think it’s ambitious enough, projecting the cost of failing to fully address the deteriorated state of the country’s infrastructure well over $10 trillion by 2040.
Getting the Funding Flowing
Moving $1.2 trillion through the federal government was never going to be an easy process, but 2 years in, the Biden administration feels good about the progress that has been made. There is a lot of minutiae and red tape to sort through in a federal bill this large and far-reaching, but ultimately the funding will stream out. Dollars are being distributed to the states, but getting it spent on specific projects and out of the planning phase is another hurdle. Lawmakers also want to make sure the funding is being used on projects that have the largest impact on the overall infrastructure network and American mobility—not just pet projects.
Recently, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg addressed the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and gave his take on the progress that has been made in implementing the IIJA.
“One way to think about it is, if our first year was about the bill passing, and the second year was about the programs’ launching, this is about the money moving so we can get the dirt flying,” said Buttigieg.
Unlike past infrastructure bills, where the goal was strictly economic stimulus, the IIJA funding has not been funneled directly to “shovel-ready” projects. President Obama’s infrastructure spending push was driven by the goal of getting people back to work and the economy moving. The optics of having construction crews hard at work on roads and bridges, although not the only point, was a key consideration at that economic moment. President Biden has the luxury of a relatively good economy, easing inflationary headwinds and strong employment numbers. His administration can make sure it is spending the money wisely to maximize the legislation’s impact.
Despite some initial lag in getting money moving and dirt flying, there has already been a very substantial distribution of IIJA dollars. State highway funds have received over $125 million for 30,000 projects, nearly 3,000 bridge repair or replacement projects have been funded, and $9.9 billion has been committed by states for 10,000 new highway and bridge projects. State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are still working through the process of navigating the IIJA, where a large portion of the funding is in the form of grants. It’s not as easy as pressing a button and receiving federal funding for a project. Sifting through the legalese of the 1,000-plus page document isn’t the easiest process for state and local agencies.
Although the Biden Administration isn’t as hard pressed to see immediate action on its infrastructure spending, the lag in turning dollars into new roads and bridges shouldn’t be allowed to continue much longer. IIJA funding is first allocated in a broad sense—for example, $4.2 billion for California bridges—then is obligated to specific projects before it is ultimately released in outlays. Barely more than 10 percent of the DOTs’ IIJA funding for 2022 was actually turned into outlays, according to Arkansas Representative Rick Crawford.
Every year that passes without fully spending the allocated funding effectively decreases the value of the allocation due to inflation. In the meantime, thousands more potholes and hundreds of additional structurally deficient bridges are added to the list of needed repairs every year. On a small scale, that’s less problematic, but when trying to replace 3,000 bridges, 6 months or a year of inaction could mean that hundreds of fewer projects get built.
Real Progress Is Being Made
The criticism of the IIJA rollout makes many legitimate points, but that shouldn’t take away from what has been accomplished in the 2 years since its passage. The White House tracks projects that have already been funded, and the map of America is dotted with thousands of projects that are underway.
If massive, sexy projects are more your thing than simple-span bridge replacements, such as a local road in rural South Dakota, the IIJA has that too. There is a $5 billion mega grant program to make sure large, complex projects that fall outside the realm of traditional funding methods can be constructed. These are the types of projects, like the Golden Gate Bridge or Hoover Dam, that weren’t getting off the ground in recent years due to the difficult nature of funding them.
In 2023, nine megaprojects received grants:
- $250 million to improve the Brent Spence Bridge over the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Kentucky
- $292 million to help complete the final section of concrete casing for the new Hudson River Tunnel outside New York City
- $78 million for the Roosevelt Boulevard Multimodal Project in Philadelphia
- $150 million to replace the I-10 Calcasieu River Bridge in Lake Charles, Louisiana
- $110 million to replace the Alligator River Bridge in North Carolina that will modernize travel to the Outer Banks
- $60 million to improve the I-10 Freight Corridor in Mississippi
The Engineer’s Perspective
Regardless of your political leanings, President Biden’s IIJA is a huge win for the engineering community and will keep us busy for decades to come as we work through the backlog of projects. There’s no better job security than crumbling infrastructure and a trillion dollars to be spent fixing it up. While we waited for the funding to materialize, there was a sense of skepticism that this bill would be like all the other attempts to get the politicians to take the state of our infrastructure seriously and not turn it into a cheap campaign promise. President Biden is delivering on his stated agenda and needs to continue promoting the initial success stories of the IIJA. Thousands of projects funded in under 2 years is a pretty good record to stand on.
For the engineering community seeking to maximize the impact of the IIJA on the Americans we serve in our professional role, consider political advocacy. There is a need for engineers who understand the inner workings of the funding process to work with agencies and local leaders in their states to get projects funded.
Lastly, for the American people, the IIJA will continue to have an outsized impact on previously underserved communities. This is not an act strictly focused on huge projects in urban areas. It will be replacing small bridges on local roads that get rural populations to work each day and helping to make those roads safer. There will be billions of dollars spent ensuring access to high-speed Internet in parts of the country that were previously held back by lack of broadband. Reconstructing roads and bridges will reduce the financial burden of deteriorating infrastructure to taxpayers. This is what being an engineer is all about—having an impact on our communities. The IIJA will make it easier and more fulfilling to do our jobs. It’s an exciting time to be an engineer, as we have the rare opportunity to reshape our nation’s infrastructure for the better.