Why Biden’s Infrastructure Deal Is The Future of Construction

President Biden’s infrastructure plan is lumbering forward. This massive, multi-trillion-dollar "ask" is the biggest program of its kind. Ever! It's no surprise that conservative Republicans want to slam on the brakes. But conservatives and liberals alike know that any day now, their hand will be out, asking the Feds for billions of dollars to fix some infrastructure failure in their jurisdiction.

Wildfires continue to rage in the West. Water shortages are already acute in Arizona and New Mexico, and bands of drought and water shortages are crawling across the NorthWest from Washington state to Minnesota. Coastal states from Texas to North Carolina are bracing for the next superstorm. Rising sea levels will make many of America's coastal ports unusable while flooding a dozen major cities in just a few decades.

America built most of its infrastructure one hundred years ago. Bridges, giant buildings, the electric power grid, telephone lines, railroads, interstate highways, and airports. Think of New York’s Empire State building, or San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. They’re icons of American progress, and they’re nearly a century old. America was once the home of the biggest buildings and structures in the world. Today, our tallest building is One World Trade Center, a relatively new building. Yet, it is only the 6th tallest building in the world. And if we remove the antenna, it doesn't even break the top 30. The rest of our buildings are old, old, old! Forget about building the next tallest building in the world, if America is going to compete with China and other rising economies we?MUST?repair our crumbling infrastructure!

In the early 20th Century, our economy was driven by the migration from agriculture to factories. After a lot of government funding, America became “the factory of the world”. By the later 20th Century made another migration, from an industrial economy to a service economy. We managed the transition and became the world’s super-power. But only because we could piggyback on existing (and aging) infrastructure.

Meanwhile, other economies began their journey from agriculture to service industries. Yet, because they started later they could use newer, more advanced technology. For example, they could leapfrog old copper wire technology and go straight to wireless. Countries that were relatively undeveloped a couple of decades ago now have better internet and mobile phone speeds than the US. That’s why the speed of America’s mobile phone services is rated at?#18 in the world, while China rose to #4.

Our infrastructure is simply old. And failing. There have been?26 bridge collapses?since 2000. Some collapses were at least partially due to oversized or overweight trucks going across a bridge that was just a bit too small to take the weight. Nearly?a third of America’s 600,000 bridges are in urgent need of repairs. Obsolete bridges and roads are unsafe and slow. Better infrastructure will speed up traffic and make a region more productive.

Railroads were a big part of early 20th-century productivity. The US has the largest, most sophisticated rail system in the world, with over 140,00 miles of working railroads. China is still playing catchup, with just 85,000 miles of railroad. However, if we look one level deeper, China has over 37,000 kilometers of high-speed rail in service and plans to build another 32,000 kilometers. Depending on the definition of "high speed" (in the rest of the world it usually means 150 MPH or more), the US has less than 100 miles that we can call high speed.

America needs more than just patches for our infrastructure. We need roads and telephone lines, but also a new generation of high-speed communications. We are no longer competitive with top-tier nations. We all saw our internet connections sputter as the COVID Pandemic lumbered on. In lower-income neighborhoods, many students were unable to maintain a connection with their schools. Meanwhile, corporations that failed to keep their software updated and their data safe repeatedly surrendered to international gangsters, paying out ransoms to keep their operations online.

America?requires?advanced technology to keep the economy running. Today, internet connectivity and data security are as important as telephones and railroads were a century ago. Nations like China have very advanced firewall technology that prevents (or mitigates) ransomware and other cyberattacks. Crime and war are shifting to the virtual world, and America’s cyber defenses could definitely use an upgrade. However, China’s firewall strategy comes with two BIG caveats for American culture.??

First, the “Great Firewall of China” is also pretty good at preventing the citizens of China from saying anything negative about China. The price of our future safety may be a lot higher than just the cost of equipment and software. Second, if a major Chinese corporation or government institution is successfully hacked, it is?highly unlikely?that China will publicly admit this sort of failure.

America is hacked millions of times every year. We?assume?that most hacks are small, but there is growing evidence that these hacks happen far more often than we believe… or are told. Public corporations are legally required by the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) to report all attacks. But front-page news of a big corporate security failure could shave billions of dollars off of stock valuations. From the technician who first detects the breach to the approval of a public announcement by the Board of Directors, no one will want to be associated with this failure.

Trucks and cars will inevitably be self-driving. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe later. But even today a lot of the functions in cars, trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes are at least partially controlled by computers and can be directed remotely. Our transpiration systems are increasingly linked via the Internet. Something could go catastrophically wrong. Whether it is a failure of the technology or weakness in security doesn’t really matter. As more of our lives are linked to technology, we need better infrastructure to make it all work together.

And more technology is being linked together! In relatively controlled areas, such as ports, mines, and logging roads… self-driving vehicles are taking over. These are all privately owned roads and workplaces, as opposed to state or federal roadways. If a truck drives a route 1,000 miles long, it may pass through hundreds of municipalities, federal highways, state-managed bridges… and each of these organizations may have separate rules for how self-driving vehicles can operate. Anyone municipality that is on a critical route may be able to block or challenge self-driving vehicles. There are 30,000 municipalities in America.

But a dedicated, privately owned timber road or mining site can have much more limited forms of traffic, making the area easier to manage and making the software easier to write. It won’t be quite as predictable as a factory, but it will be easier to run a pilot for autonomous vehicles than attempting to drive robot cars in the middle of a city. Private roads and worksites are the testbeds for work in the larger world. Autonomous vehicles (and other work robots) are operating on private property today, without any human operators.

Just as cars and trucks are turning autonomous, commercial airlines, railroads, and ships are also being automated. As the world became global, the cost and time to move freight around the world became a key factor in the world’s economy. Some items, such as fresh fruit, can only last a certain amount of time. Other goods represent a financial loss if they are stuck in transit for too long. And of course, more international executives are interested in investing in another nation if it is convenient for them to get there.

Modern commercial airlines are very efficient and have a lot of automation features. The last propeller-driven commercial airliner was the Lockheed Constellation, which held 65 to 90 passengers, had a cockpit crew of 5. Early jets followed this staffing pattern. Through the years automation has increased. A 787, carrying 300 passengers, can fly a route with as little as 2 pilots. That’s a remarkable change, from 1 crew member for every 15 passengers to one for every 150. That’s a key issue in airline profitability.

Another key element is our aging radar system. When you are on a flight, have you noticed all of the “turn to the right, turn to the left” maneuvers your plane takes? On the ground are is a network of radar towers. For safety reasons, planes must fly routes where they can be monitored by radar. But these towers don’t cover every square mile of America, and even with all of the commercial radar systems in the world, much of the world’s oceans are out of radar range. A satellite-based radar system would increase passenger safety, and… by eliminating these gaps… reduce the time and length (and time) of domestic flights by a third. That not only increases passenger comfort, but it reduces the cost of a flight and reduces the airline industry's carbon footprint.

Will Biden’s Infrastructure initiative support the development of “pilotless” passenger airlines and satellite radar? Or will it just focus on just rebuilding traditional copper, steel, and concrete infrastructure? No matter what the answer is, there’s going to be a lot of building going on. Interestingly, even before the pandemic, there had a labor shortage. Especially for entry-level workers.

In the 1980s and 1990s, America tapped its last great unused labor pool. Women workers. Today more college students, more new workers, and more new managers are women. As tens of millions of women attend college or engage in work, a new workforce was needed to clean the house, cook dinner, and mow the lawn. This employment vacuum led to rising illegal immigration. The approximately?3 million illegals in 1990, became over 12 million by 2015. America now views immigration far more negatively. Yet, we are still desperate to fill the jobs that deported immigrants have vacated.

This “Perfect Storm” of too many jobs and too few workers will surely lead to massive automation. In the past, the main driver for automation has been the lack of labor, rather than the desire to cut costs. But a few years later, when the economy dips, a bit of automation becomes a Tsunami of automation that can completely eliminate certain jobs. Construction work has been a major entry point for the American Dream for many young Americans.

But America’s huge infrastructure project (and the money that comes with it) is likely to eliminate many of today’s 4 million truck driver jobs and 11 million construction jobs. But if we don’t create a more automated cost-effective construction industry, it will not only negatively affect US businesses, it will make it very difficult to compete for international construction work. As Asia and Africa continue to develop economically, trillions of dollars of new buildings and infrastructure will be needed.

So, what will it be? Will Biden get sign-off on a transformative infrastructure bill? Or will America be overtaken by China and other nations that are more willing to invest in the infrastructure of the 21st Century? Tell us what you think!