DALLAS — The United States needs to invest more in its transportation infrastructure to ensure systems are connected to each other, linking road and rail with ports, Vice President Joe Biden said to a gathering of port officials in Houston on Wednesday.
"How can we have a 21st century economy with 20th century infrastructure?" Biden asked during his keynote speech at the annual convention of the American Association of Port Authorities. "How can we take advantage of the profound economic opportunities we have without at least a modicum of additional investment in ports?"
The U.S. needs to invest $3.6 trillion in infrastructure by the 2020, including more than $90 billion in essential port improvements, Biden said.
"The United States of America invests only 1% of our gross domestic product in transportation and infrastructure," he said. "China invests 10% of its GDP in infrastructure."
Public-private partnerships, which he noted are not new to ports, are also opportunities for increasing freight capacity, Biden said.
"Ports can expect to ship 50% more cargo by 2020 than they do now, and that's probably a low estimate," Biden said. "Water-borne commerce accounts for 32% of our GDP now, and that will be 37% in 2015 and go to 60% by 2030."
Biden called ports "the lifeblood of our economy."
U.S. inland and seaway ports and harbors directly support 13 million jobs and millions more in related manufacturing and services, he said.
"Those are good-paying, middle-class jobs that generate $650 billion a year in personal income," Biden said. "There's a lot at stake for our economy and for our middle class."
The bipartisan Water Resources Reform and Development Act passed by Congress and signed into law earlier this year is a good start to port improvement, Biden said.
"There's so much more work to be done," he added.
WRRDA is expected to provide 34 port, inland waterway, and flood control projects a total of $5.9 billion of federal spending through 2019 and another $6.9 billion through 2024. Spending on several of the projects is expected to extend past 2024.
The bill establishes a five-year, $350 million low-cost credit program for water projects modeled on the popular Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, which covers road and transit projects.
The WRRDA contained Water Infrastructure and Innovation Act credit enhancement programs, operated by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, which can fund up to 51% of a project's cost, but funding cannot include proceeds from tax-exempt bonds.
Federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grants also help fund port projects, Biden said, by leveraging $4 in state or private investments for every $1 in grants.
The Port of Virginia will use its recent $15 million TIGER grant to expand an entry into the port complex. The port contributed $16 million to the new gateway, which will take more than 700 trucks a day off two roads into the facility that go through residential neighborhoods, Biden said.
"Government is not the answer, but we can be the catalyst," Biden said.
