In most Northeast and Midwest cities the past winter has left roads and bridges a pockmarked mess of ruts and crevices… Crews couldn't keep up with all the potholes they needed to fill and now stop gap asphalt plugs are crumbling apart as summer quickly approaches. State and local budgets also cannot make due without help from Washington—the federal Highway Trust Fund continues to provide insufficient revenues since Congress refuses to raise the gas tax, which supports this primary wellspring for funding local transportation infrastructure. The tax hasn't been increased since 1993 and hasn't been supplemented by any other meaningful source of public works budgeting as costs and needs have spiraled for repairing ageing roads as well as funding new infrastructure including mass transit.

Increasingly states enter into various forms of highly-touted public private partnerships (PPPs) to build a relative handful of new road and bridge projects, funded inevitably either by tolls, fees or yes higher state and local (sales, income, gas) taxes to meet debt service on bonds or other financing schemes, which will extend well into the future. But these PPPs typically do not address the ongoing and increasingly daunting maintenance needs for existing systems. Many highways built in the post World War II era across the country now require significant overhauls—not just pavement patching.

So that gets us back to our potholed roads, which not only wreak havoc on wheels, axels, and undercarriages, but also present real safety concerns to drivers. And the situation worsens incrementally year over year, augmenting congestion and increasing the chances for road closures and major disruptions.