Link:

Real Growth for 2020 Transportation Construction Market, ARTBA Chief Economist Says

Links:

Presidential Candidates Will Talk Infrastructure at Forum

Politico: Presidential Candidates’ Tracker on Transportation Issues

Congress Repeals $7.6B Highway Funding Rescission

Links:

https://www.politico.com/morningtransportation/

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2mVFb1clnJM4ERAQ2hEhJW?

On this episode, we talk to Mark Ogden, technical specialist and project manager for the Association of State Dam Safety Officials about the current state of America’s aquatic infrastructure.

Links:

http://damsafety.org

http://damfailures.org

On this episode, Neil Pedersen, Executive Director of the Transportation Research Board, shares the details of TRB’s The Future Interstate Report: 10 Big Ideas for the 21st Century.

Links:

interstate.trb.org

On this episode, Ed Sullivan, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist in the Market Intelligence Group for the Portland Cement Association, shares the details of his annual Fall forecast for the economy and cement consumption.

The federal government plays a key role in so many initiatives across all 50 states, but there aren’t many that are greater than the lead Uncle Sam takes when it comes to funding transportation.

The lagging condition of our infrastructure is well known. Perhaps it’s the magnitude of the need that makes one transportation non-profit’s message so unique.

Transportation for America has made a break from conventional thinking, and while others are saying “more,” its leaders have energetically declared “no more.”

T4’s Director, Beth Osborne, joins us week to explain her organization’s funding message heard ‘round the transportation world.

Link:

Advocacy Group: Stop Spending on New Roads

Now he advises planners work to prepare their roads, bridges, water systems, electrical grids, and telecommunications networks before the next big weather event strikes. That was his suggestion in an article he co-authored for RouteFifty.com, and it’s what he told us during a recent telephone conversation.

Links:

Former Emergency Managers: Act Now Before the Next Storm

Researchers for the non-profit, non-partisan Eno Center for Transportation want Congress to update the way money is spent. The think-tank recently published a report focused on the outdated funding formulas that are used to dole out billions in federal dollars to states annually.

Paul Lewis is Eno’s Vice President of Policy and Finance. He visited the Hard Facts studio this week to discuss the findings, and ideas, included in the report.

Links:

Report: Refreshing the Status Quo: Federal Highway Programs and Funding Distribution

Webinar Presentation of the Report

As Congress continues to work this fall on a new surface reauthorization bill, we’re talking about the report, Delivering for America, with Matt Sonnesyn, the Business Roundtable’s Vice President of Infrastructure, Energy, and Environment.

Link:

Delivering for America

The goal is to make transportation, communications, water, and energy investments more durable in the face of increasingly strong weather events and rising sea levels.

The bi-partisan Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, based in the Washington, D.C. metro area, shares that view, stumping for action since offering its policy options to achieve climate resilient infrastructure in January 2018.

Kristiane Huber is the Center’s Resilience Fellow. She helped write the paper and visited the Hard Facts studio this week to talk about it.

Links:

Center for Climate and Energy Solutions

Policy Options for Climate-Resilient Infrastructure

Last week’s House congressional panel addressed steps needed to reduce indutrial emissions.

The topic is similar at tomorrow’s hearing of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. In this episode, we examine resiliency and the legislative agenda impacting the cement and concrete industries with the Select Committee’s ranking member, Congressman Garret Graves, Republican from Louisiana.

On this episode, we hear Gregory’s testimony, a few of the questions he fielded from lawmakers, and also the view shared by another hearing panelist, Ross Eisenberg, Vice President of Energy and Resources Policy for the National Association of Manufacturers.

We’ve heard people on this podcast talk about it. So we thought we’d talk to the people who issued it. This week, we explore the Infrastructure Report Card issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers, with Anna Denecke, ASCE’s Director of Infrastructure Initiatives.

This week, Dr. Jeremy Gregory, the Executive Director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joins us to explain the science of concrete, telling us why it’s cooler, and how it’s able to last so long.

So we’re playing catch up now, with Mike Philipps, the new President of the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association. Here’s the conversation about policy, traffic congestion, and mixing trucks.

Jon Deuser counsels the Portland Cement Association and others on transportation legislation and policy, drawing from almost two decades of experience in the Senate and House.

He tells Hard Facts the first vote was quick, and exciting, but that future action on a surface bill will take longer, predicting at least one extension to the current legislation will be needed before it expires at the end of next year.

We posed that question to this week’s guest, Carlos Braceras, President of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and Executive Director of the Utah Department of Transportation.

The bill, America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act of 2019, puts down a marker for spending and stakes out positions on several policy issues, including resiliency.

Rachel Derby, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Portland Cement Association (PCA), and James O’Keefe, a former EPW committee staffer who now advises PCA and others on federal policy and legislative issues, visit the Hard Facts studio to give their view of the new legislation.

Our guest is no stranger to the impacts of weather on the things we build. Pam Russell is a veteran journalist who covered Hurricane Katrina for the New Orleans Times Picayune. Today she writes for Engineering News Record.

We’ve gone through her most recent reporting on these issues and decided to ask her about some of those stories.

We posed those questions to this week’s guest, Dr. David Dzombak, a professional engineer who heads the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

That may be true, but one advocate says elected officials are missing the chance to win support, and perhaps their own races, if they ignore voters’ demands for better infrastructure.

Michael Johnson, President and CEO of the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association, joins us for a conversation about the political realities of infrastructure financing.

Pamela Williams, Executive Director of the Build Strong Coalition, first helped write the Disaster Recovery Reform Act from her perch as a key staffer on Capitol Hill. Today, away from Congress, she is working to implement the programs created in the legislation.

Williams visited the Hard Facts studio recently to discuss the law, the need for a new perspective on federal disaster assistance, and plans to help put key pieces of the Act into motion.

State Transportation Funding Boosts Can't Replace Federal Dollars, Road Builders Say

Steve Sandherr, the CEO of Associated General Contractors of America, gives his thoughts on how partisanship is crushing the hope of improving American infrastructure.

Ed Mortimer, the Chamber’s Vice President of Transportation and Infrastructure, appears this week to explain the plan and the need for Congressional action before the end of this year.

James O’Keefe has been on the inside, shaping federal policy, crunching budget numbers, and
navigating Congressional politics for more than twenty years. He also consults the Portland
Cement Association.

Informed by his own contacts in Hill offices, O’Keefe tell us this week that work continues on a
plan that includes discussion of ways to pump more money into the federal program.

Politico’s Sam Mintz writes for his newsroom’s Morning Transportation daily newsletter. He
visits Hard Facts to discuss what happened at the White House, and where Congress may be
headed even as the presidential election storm approaches.

This week we visit with Bob Risser and Christi Collins, both members of the North American Concrete Association (NACA).

Risser is President and CEO of the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute. Collins is Executive Director of the American Concrete Pumping Association.

Danielle Kleinhans, the organization’s President and CEO, gives us a history lesson and explains why she is cautiously optimistic that Capitol Hill will find a solution.

Hard Facts went along as members of the Portland Cement Association and the North American
Concrete Alliance visited House and Senate members, seeking their support for a solution.

Tom Beck, PCA Board of Directors Chairman; Ron Henley, PCA Board of Directors Vice
Chairman; Lori Tiefenthaler, Senior Director of Marketing at Lehigh Hansen; and West Virginia
Senator Shelley Moore Capito are the guests this week.

Jerry Voigt is the President and CEO of the American Concrete Pavement Association. He tells us inaction, for him and his members, is not an option.

But will anything get done this year? Rachel Derby, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Portland Cement Association, discusses the legislative process and addresses the potential for action in the current Congress.

Jeremy Gregory, executive director of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, talks this week about the Life Cycle Cost Analysis approach to planning transportation projects, which he says can return money-saving benefits to every road and bridge project.