In a tweet he wrote that the money in the new bill should be “focused solely on jobs and rebuilding the once-great infrastructure of our country!”
Congress has already been urged to renew another key piece of infrastructure legislation, which authorised $305 billion for highway and motor vehicle safety, public transportation from 2016-20.
Observers suggest that significant sums are certainly required.
Writing on LinkedIn, Shailen Bhatt, president and CEO of ITS America, noted that 2009’s $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus included just over $100 billion for infrastructure, $50 billion of which was for roads, bridges, and high speed rail.
This followed the 2008 banking crisis and financial crash.
“In retrospect, it is clear that ARRA wasn’t enough of a stimulus to pull the American economy out of the doldrums,” Bhatt suggested. “It would have also been better to invest more in infrastructure at the time. Over the next several years we saw ground breakings and ribbon cuttings on new projects that improved our transportation system and put Americans back to work."
