Urban Road Reinvestment: The Effects of External Aid
研究美国城市道路维护不足的问题，分析联邦和州政府援助项目以及地方社区再投资努力是否成功逆转了城市道路维修推迟的趋势。
There is a widespread conviction that the United States should be doing more to repair and improve its roads. The other papers in this session examine investment choices affecting the interstate highway system. In this paper, I look at the opposite extreme of the nation's road network: the local road system under urban government administration. The deterioration of city streets probably is linked as closely with a general undermaintenance of urban capital facilities, and postponement by cities of capital reinvestment decisions of all kinds, as it is to characteristics of the transportation sector. Cities with backlogs of street repairs are likely to confront backlogs for water pipe replacement, separation of combined sewer systems and sewer pipe replacement, and bridge and building repairs, as well. In 1982 when it passed the Surface Transportation Assistance Act, Congress recognized the special problems of city road repairs. It preserved the Federal Aid-Urban Program, which the administration had sought to eliminate, and for the first time required that 40 percent of the monies be used for rehabilitation, resurfacing, repair, or reconstruction, starting in 1984. A handful of states have also created special grant programs to assist cities in resurfacing city streets. In addition, capital repairs have acquired local political impetus in some cities. A favorite device has been the establishment of community reinvestment efforts, that bring together business leaders and political leaders to form infrastructure commissions of several years' duration, whose purpose is to win local public support for higher capital investment and maintenance levels. Have these efforts succeeded in reversing the trend toward postponement of urban road maintenance and repair? If so, which instruments of support have been most successful and hold most promise for the future?