The nation’s surface transportation infrastructure includes the critical highways, bridges, railroads, and transit systems that enable people and goods to access the markets, services, and inputs of production essential to America’s economic vitality.

For many years, the nation’s surface  transportation infrastructure has been deteriorating.

Yet because this deterioration has been diffused throughout the nation, and has occurred gradually over time, its true costs and economic impacts are not always immediately apparent.

In practice, the transportation funding that is appropriated is spent on a fixture of system expansion and preservation projects.

Although these allocations have often been sufficient to avoid the imminent failure of key facilities, the continued deterioration leaves a significant and mounting burden on the U.S. economy.

This burden is explored in Failure To Act: The Economic Impact Of Current Investment Trends In Surface Transportation Infrastructure (40p. PDF).

This report from the American Society of Civil Engineers seeks to provide an objective analysis of the economic implications of the United States’ continued underinvestment in infrastructure.

It is part of a project that is structured around four reports to assess implications for the productivity of industries, national competitiveness, and effects on households given the present trends of infrastructure investment.

It details how deteriorating conditions and performance impose costs on American households and businesses in a number of ways.

Facilities in poor condition lead to increases in operating costs for trucks, cars, and rail vehicles.

Additional costs include damage to vehicles from deteriorated roadway surfaces, imposition of both additional miles traveled, time expended to avoid unusable or heavily congested roadways or due to the breakdown of transit vehicles, and the added cost of repairing facilities after they have deteriorated as opposed to preserving them in good condition.

In addition, increased congestion decreases the reliability of transportation facilities, meaning that travelers are forced to allot more time for trips to assure on-time arrivals (and for freight vehicles, on-time delivery).

Moreover, it increases environmental and safety costs by exposing more travelers to substandard travel conditions and requiring vehicles to operate at less efficient levels.

This report is not only about the effect that surface transportation deficiencies have, but those which will continue to have, on U.S. economic performance.

For the purpose of this report, the term “deficiency” is defined as the extent to which roads, bridges, and transit services fall below standards defined by the U.S. Department of Transportation as “minimum tolerable conditions” (for roads and bridges) and “state of good repair” for transit

These standards are substantially lower than ideal conditions, such as “free-flow,” that are used by some researchers as the basis for highway analysis.

In 2010, it was estimated that deficiencies in America’s surface  transportation systems cost households and businesses nearly $130 billion.

This included approximately $97 billion in vehicle operating costs, $32 billion in travel time delays, $1.2 billion in safety costs and $590 million in environmental costs.

In 2040, America’s projected infrastructure deficiencies in a trends extended scenario are expected to cost the national economy more than 400,000 jobs. Approximately 1.3 million more jobs could exist in key knowledge-based and technology-related economic sectors if sufficient transportation infrastructure were maintained.

These losses are balanced against almost 900,000 additional jobs projected in traditionally lower-paying service sectors of the economy that would benefit by deficient transportation (such as auto repair services) or by declining productivity in domestic service related sectors (such as truck driving and retail trade).

If present trends continue, by 2020 the annual costs imposed on the U.S. economy by deteriorating infrastructure will increase by 82% to $210 billion, and by 2040 the costs will have increased by 351% to $520 billion (with cumulative costs mounting to $912 billion and $2.9 trillion by 2020 and 2040, respectively).

The full-report can be found here, and the vital technical appendix is accessible here.