Infrastructure of Goods Transportation in United State

Infrastructure is a collective term that refers to all the elements in place to facilitate
transportation, communication, and business exchange. Transportation infrastructure refers to
the structure that contributed to the transport system. Transportation infrastructure is the
backbone of a present-day, competitive and effective economy. It also functions to move the
passengers and goods that importance to the economic and social in a country. High
efficiency of mobility of the transportation service and good quality transportation
infrastructure can make the standard of living become better. More developed transport
infrastructure can increase the connectivity and mobility in a country and it also can reduce
the transaction cost and distributional inequalities between urban and rural areas to make the
country become more developed.
As we know, United State is a developed country that more focus on exporting and
importing in the country. So, United State are more dependent on the transportation
infrastructure to make sure the effective and efficiency for the goods of transport. The main
infrastructure in U.S. that connected the transportation network to local and global markets
are seaports, airports and warehousing. It was very important to make sure the efficient
transport infrastructure for satisficed the increased demand and transportation services. An
efficient infrastructure also can increase and make confident to the production and
consumption, hence it will make benefit to the regional economy. Social cohesion and
economic growth in a country are more dependent on the influences of the transportation
infrastructure. A region cannot be competitive without an efficient transport network
The influence of transportation infrastructure improvements on economic growth and
development is one of the key questions in transport economics, which has been subjected to
numerous reassessments (Aschauer, 1989; Clark et al., 2004; Easterly, 1993). Aschauer
(1989) estimated the impact of core infrastructure (streets, highways, airports, and water
systems) on economic growth and productivity in the United States during 19491985, and
reported elasticities of government capital ranging from 0.38 to 0.56, and Munnell (1990),
estimated an elasticity of output with respect to infrastructure near 0.34 in a national study.
However, these estimates have been criticized because of the issues of spurious relationships,
simplified structural form and the aggregated data used for analysis (Gramlich 1994).
The transportation infrastructure system in the United State are underperforming from
year-by-year. The roadways, railways, railways, seaports, and waterways that once

represented the best of modern architecture and engineering are deteriorating. Due to the
increasing in the population and shifting demands to a modern economy, inevitably worn
down by age and stretched beyond capacity. Bridges are enervating, roads are enervating,
airport delays are becoming more frequent and ports are too shallow to accommodate the next
generation of ships. Infrastructure is critical to economic growth, but the aging U.S.
transportation system suffers from insufficient investment. The fact that the nations
infrastructure has deteriorated is reflected in both domestic and international measures of
infrastructure adequacy and performance. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
gave U.S. infrastructure a dismal D+ rating in its latest 2013 assessment, a marginal but
uninspiring improvement over its D rating in 2009 (American Society of Civil Engineers,
2013). In 2014, the World Economic Forums Global Competitiveness Index ranked the
United States just 16th in the world in terms of the quality of overall infrastructure, down
from ninth overall before the onset of the deep recession of 200809 and below international
peers such as France, Germany and Japan (World Economic Forum, 2015). The United States
ranks well behind many of its competitors in overall infrastructure quality.
The condition of U.S. transportation infrastructure, manifested by lack of space,
limited of goods, rough surface area. Condition information is collected from inspection
reports, age-based projections, reports of failures, and sometimes in the form of performance
degradation. Besides, the number of derailments on freight railroads has been falling, but
significant derailments involving release of hazardous materials still occur and it is a hot
topic by public. (Federal Railroad Administration,2012). The transportation infrastructure in
United State is large and aging. Most of these was built more than four decades ago, so it is
necessary need to carry out reparation and restoration. Due to the limited financial problem in
U.S., so it was become harder to build a new one infrastructure to replace the old. The
effective way is to maintenance and rehabilitation.
Transport infrastructure play an important role in each of the country, it help to
generate income to the countries and also a backbone to build a modern and competitive
country. Hence, the government in U.S. must be play more attention on these transport
infrastructures although it had a lot of challenges of maintaining. The members of Business
Roundtable believe that strategic public-sector leadership is indispensable to reversing the
underperformance and deterioration of the nations transportation infrastructure, which

provides a critical foundation for U.S. economic growth and sustained international
competitiveness.
American Society of Civil Engineers. (2013). 2013 Report Card For American
Infrastructure.
Aschauer, D.A. Is Public Expenditure Productive? Journal of Monetary Economics 23 (2),
(1989): 177-200
Gramlich, E.M. Infrastructure Investment: A Review Essay. Journal of Economic Literature
32, (1994): 1176-1196.
Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). Railroad Safety Statistics 2012 Preliminary Annual
Report. February 2012.
Munnell, A.H. Why Has Productivity Growth Declined? Productivity and Public
Investment.
New England Economic Review Jan/Feb, (1990): 3-22.
World Economic Forum. (2015). Global Competitiveness Report 20142015.