The Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County hosted a “Transportation in Pennsylvania” luncheon on Tuesday, October 8 at the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center. Addressing the more than 100 Chamber members were Barry Schoch, Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, journalist and author Dan McNichol, and Dan Hawbaker, president and CEO of Glen O. Hawbaker.
McNichol, currently on a national tour to bring awareness of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, provided the larger, national context of the crisis facing America. He is traveling across the country in a 1949 Hudson.
“There are 4 million miles of roads in the United States,” he says. “Our culture is defined by those roads.”
He noted that the Chinese have built a national road system based on what they learned from the U.S. Interstate System. “Like every great society, including the (ancient) Romans, we have congestion, and congestion is killing us,” he says.
McNichol explains that congestion and accidents slow down commerce and clog the nation’s courts. “The impact of bad roads is stunning. It is time to rebuild.”
Pennsylvania is particularly vulnerable to job loss and higher prices considering the condition of its infrastructure. The number of deficient bridges grows larger every year.
McNichol, who is following the path that President Dwight Eisenhower took to prove that American roads were poor, outlined the serious challenges the United States and Pennsylvania face:
He listed many of them, including:
- The nation’s heavy rail system has very little capacity for passenger service.
- Fifty percent of all Americans have no access to rail service.
- The Chinese have built the largest subterranean rail system in the world, double the size of New York’s subway system.
- Most American ports are not deep enough for new ships.
- Many of the locks in the U.S. were built in the 19th century.
- The dams and 100,000 miles of levees in the United States are poorly maintained.
- Storm water and sewage are not well controlled.
- The power grid created by the 3,300 utilities in the country needs to be rebuilt.
- We have not decided how to handle electronic waste.
- Thousands of Brownfield sites await action and remediation.
“Have you heard about the broken window theory? If you allow a broken window to go unattended, it will invite serious problems and crime. Well a broken bridge is as important as a broken window. This all has an impact on the psyche of our nation.”
He turned the program over to Dan Hawbaker.
“We are a true crossroads,” Hawbaker states. “I think the United States is the Golden Goose that leads the world. We are not doing a good job taking care of the Golden Goose. We are depleting our resources trying to work through the morass of political creatures.”
Hawbaker spoke about the need for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to pass Senate Bill 1 calling for $2.5 billion for Pennsylvania infrastructure upgrades. He thanked State Senator Jake Corman for his hard work on getting the bill passed 45 to 5 in the Senate.
“We have worked diligently with everyone concerned to make progress on this,” Hawbaker says. “We have tremendous backing and this bill needs to be done at the $2.5 billion level. And if we don’t do it soon there will be significant ramifications. We have been patching the system for far too long. We need to build, not fix and patch. We are avoiding a crisis, right now. And it is not a contrived crisis. It’s a real crisis.”
Secretary Schoch then addressed the specific challenges facing Pennsylvania.
“I have spent the past 2-and-a-half years discussing the problems we face,” he began. “You can’t allow infrastructure to age without consequence.”
Currently, Pennsylvania has 1,200 bridges with weight restrictions and they are costing the state’s economy. “We have 11,000 bridges that cannot handle the load they need to handle. It isn’t a pretty picture.”
The Secretary noted that each year the state will add more than 200 bridges to the weight-restricted list, if nothing is done. “Our bridges are aging and there is only so much you can do to slow the aging process.”
Schoch underlined the urgency of the situation. “The next two weeks will determine what’s going to happen. We can’t punt any more. It will get worse and accelerate. Decaying infrastructure will make Pennsylvania uncompetitive. Either we solve the problem or we don’t and have to pay the price, including higher costs for goods and services.”
The state’s ports are also in need of upgrades and mass transit systems are failing at an alarming rate.
“This is a jobs bill,” Schoch said. “It will mean the creation of 50,000 jobs or the loss of 12,000 if the bill is not passed.
In his concluding remarks, Secretary Schoch stated that no project is more important than the Route 322 improvements from Seven Mountains to State College. “The Senate bill has a lot of money for local municipalities and local road improvements, he says.
Dan Hawbaker concluded the session by explaining that employment at his company and many others will be impacted by the decision on Senate Bill 1. “Employment at Glen O. Hawbaker is on the brink,” he said. “And so is the economic well-being of the Commonwealth.”
