Rethinking America's Highways

Every policy wonk and politician interested in infrastructure should read Bob's book. --Chris Edwards CATO Institute In Rethinking America's Highways, Poole furthers his reputation as one of the world's leading experts on infrastructure and public-private partnerships. In this book, he brilliantly demonstrates how an economic model for highways, rather than our current political approach, would unlock substantial value. --Stephen Goldsmith, Harvard University Robert Poole's bold, innovative thinking on infrastructure could not come at a better time. He provides a comprehensive analysis of the endemic, seemingly intractable problems facing our nation's infrastructure, and offers a practical set of solutions. He explains not only how the tolling and private participation used around the world can improve US transportation infrastructure, but how decades-old lessons from utility regulation will ensure that those policies are in the public interest. This book is a must-read for anyone wanting a clear policy guide for moving US infrastructure into the 21st century. --Rick Geddes, Cornell University While per-gallon fuel taxes served as a proxy for our highway needs in the past, the pending insolvency of the federal Highway Trust Fund proves that model to be unsustainable. As Poole suggests, there are clear paths to self-supporting infrastructure by seeing highways as an asset class, and by creating an environment that taps into now widely available global infrastructure investment funds. Poole offers a well-reasoned transition from the failing 20th-century highway model to one that can sustain and support our country for the 21st century. --Mary Peters, former US Secretary of Transportation Are politicians ever celebrated for preventing bridges and roads from crumbling? No, they are celebrated for cutting ribbons on brand-new infrastructure projects, regardless of their economic soundness over time. This is one reason I find Robert Poole's argument in Rethinking America's Highways so appealing. It is vitally important that we depoliticize infrastructure by turning state transportation departments into public utilities, a seemingly modest change that would have enormously beneficial consequences. --National Review