If falling bridges are for real, who’s going to fix them?

Going under bridges every day in the summer, this is the kind of stuff that captures my interest (apart from avoiding people in rowboats who seem to forget they are facing backwards!)

Berry Vrbanovic, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, says falling bridges are real. In a December 22 (2011) letter to the National Post, Vrbanovic rejects statements in a Dec. 6 commentary by the Post’s Jack Mintz that the infrastructure deficit is make-believe. “Canadians see bridges falling apart on the evening news,” says Vrbanovic. “They worry when they hear that 1,000 boil-water warnings are issued every year across Canada, and they're tired of crowded buses, traffic gridlock and spending the equivalent of 32 working days a year commuting to and from work… it's clear Canadians want all orders of government to continue working together to put our aging roads, bridges, water systems and public transit on solid ground.”

If misery loves company, then – as Canadians begin to grapple with a serious infrastructure deficit – it should come as a comfort that we are not alone with these challenges.

A 2007 article by Ellen McGirt in FastCompany.com quotes statistics from the American Society of Civil Engineers which indicate it would take more than a trillion and a half dollars over a five year period to bring (USA) roads, highways, bridges, railways, tunnels and dams back to “any sort of reasonable condition”. A New York Times article from the same year attacks “ideological influences that have pushed for smaller government and lower taxes – at the expense of our common infrastructure”.

To Canadians, this sounds depressingly similar, even if the numbers themselves are, of course, smaller. But the USA infrastructure debate gets even more weird and similar to – of all things – the health care privatization debate in our own country. Apparently private investors, mostly foreign, are quickly moving in to bail out desperate local governments in the USA which are facing budget shortfalls. In so doing, these investors are taking ownership of many of the taxpayer-financed infrastructures assets all across the USA.

Most fascinating, perhaps, is who is the major player taking on this ownership. McGirt points out that it is increasingly one major player, and not even a North American one at that! Australia’s Macquarie Infrastructure Group (along with its several subsidiaries) is aggressively pursuing more and more privatization deals. As McGirt writes, “As the 800 pound gorilla in infrastructure deals world-wide, (Macquarie) is shoving other investment/private equity players out of the way. Says a source from a competing firm, “they seem to pay any price for what they want… The majority of these deals are considered public/private partnerships, or PPPs, which are long term leases. Local governments get the cash for immediate -and often pressing - needs, the investors take ownership of the asset, and monetize it through tolls which they set.”

As with health care, Canadians will be asking themselves if toll-roads and bridges are the way to build and maintain our future. This debate will be equally divisive, if not as emotional; in the meantime, engineers, contractors and service companies will be watching with interest. Taxpayers will always pay the piper, one way or another. The burning question is… who will be making the decisions and actually writing the cheques to get the work done?

The author, Peter Kingsmill, is a vice president at www.ShearwaterMarineServices.ca