The Pandemic in Builders' Way

While politicians in Washington debate trillion-dollar infrastructure packages, states are canceling projects

- Cristina Lindblad

For years, U.S. infrastructure has been waiting for a blast of new money. Instead, the coronavirus slump is draining away the already limited resources available to maintain and improve it.

Just three months ago, when the country went into lockdown to curtail the spread of Covid-19, there were expectations the crisis would spur the government and lawmakers in Washington into long-delayed action. The Trump administration is preparing to unveil a $1 trillion infrastructure proposal as part of its push to revive the U.S. economy, according to people familiar with the discussions, while House Democrats have offered their own $494 billion plan. Yet experts say that even if a bipartisan deal could be struck—a big if—any increase in federal funding for highways, bridges, and the like may not be enough to compensate for reductions in infrastructure spending at the state and municipal levels, preventing many projects from moving forward.

Tara Beauchamp, a project manager at Anderson Columbia Co., a family-owned contracting company in Lake City, Fla., has already seen at least one project canceled because states have been tightening their spending. She’s worried that more will do so as the shutdowns and the recession eat into revenue streams that pay for transportation and other types of projects. Road traffic in the U.S. is down 38%, which is crimping revenue from excise taxes on gasoline and highway tolls.