version of -- >> we leave the last few minutes of this program. watch it in its [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.] the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's room, washington, d.c., may 19, 2014. i hereby appoint the honorable jeff denham to act as speaker

pro tempore on this day. signed, john a. boehner, speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the order of the house of january 7, 2014, the chair will now recognize members from lists submitted by the majority and minority leaders for morning hour ebate. the chair will alternate recognition between the parties with each party limited to one hour and each member other than the majority and minority leaders and the minority whip but in to five minutes, no event shall debate continue beyond 1:50 p.m. the chair recognizes the gentleman from oklahoma, mr. lankford, for five minutes. mr. nkford: thank you, speaker. mr. speaker, today i just want to come and reflect for just a moment on a lady i met a few weeks ago on loyalty day. many americans don't know about loyalty day. it's a day of remembrance around may 1. it's the celebration time.

it's remembrance and a time to recognize the freedom we have in america. this lady, zona, shani, oklahoma, she stood and -- shawnee, oklahoma, she stood and talked about her husband and her husband's passion that people would not forget those that are missing in korea still. served zona's husband in korea from 1951 to 1953. he led a group of people, eight of them did not return. never found. they were considered missing in action. many americans still today do not realize that we have 7,883 people still officially listed as missing in action from the korean war. his passion was that his buddies would never, ever be forgotten. he died two years ago.

and he passed on that legacy to his wife and said don't let anyone forget my buddies that never came home from korea and were never found. last year she had installed at her own expense a black granite ench in shawnee, oklahoma, and spent her own money, $2,500 to be able to put that granite bench there and that bench just reads let us not forget those left in korea. she's still carrying out her husband's wish. she's still challenging the nation not to forget and when i met her that day, that was her one emphasis, do not allow them to be forgotten. officially we still have missing there. they're missing but not forgotten, and when her husband grew sick and that legacy passed on to her, she turned to

me and asked me to pass it on to the nation which i will fulfill today. ladies and gentlemen, let me just remind us of a statement she made, she said, they gave me my freedom. these people gave their hearts, their soul and their blood so we could be free. today in washington, d.c., not far from here, there's a man standing with a rifle in front of the tomb of the unknowns. he will pace back and forth in honor and in recognition of the people will not be forgotten. memorial day is not just a single day in america. memorial day is every day in america for those who choose not to forget. we do not. and we are grateful as a nation for their incredible sacrifice and our ability to live free here because they stood for us. with that, mr. speaker, i yield back.

the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to clau we willr on c-span, have former new york times executive editor jill abramson ebbing the commencement address at wake forest university. it is her first public speaking since being fired from that

organization. you can watch her remarks on our companion network had 1:00 eastern. of senator mccaskill missouri holds the first on >> roundtable discussions on combating rape on college campuses. assaultinvolve sexual advocacy leaders. you can see that live today at 2 p.m. on c-span2. the brookings institution held an event on tuesday talking about the stain ability and -- the nation'sy and infrastructure. congressman john delaney spoke about his bill. and event was from detroit salt lake city. >> good morning, everyone. my name is bruce katz. i am the vice president's at the

brookings institution, the founding director oh of the metro policy program year -- founding director of the metro policy program here. i want to welcome you and those watching on c-span. have beenolks involved in designing infrastructure week and pulling it off. to all of you, from bookings, thank you. and also thank you to the foundations and corporations that really have made our work possible. the ford foundation, hitachi,, kkr, and all the leaders of our metropolitan leadership council. they really have made our research possible. the timing of this could not be better. and i know congressman delaney is going to talk about this. clearly short-term

federal actions involving the gas tax and the highway trust fund that are critical and really a new way of national governments engaging. but there are really meta-issues in forming this week. does the united states have what it takes to build and retrofit a new generation of infrastructure for today's pressing challenges? decade becauseal of supersized economic and social challenges facing the country. we need more jobs. we still need seven point one million jobs to keep pace with labor dynamics, population growth. we need better jobs. we went from 81 million people to living in poverty or near poverty in this country in 2000 to 107 million. we need to build communities that are resilient and sustainable in the face of economic restructuring and

environmental challenges. so, infrastructure can play an enormous role in addressing the super challenges, but at the citynal scale and the scale, everything innovates continuously. what we try to do at brookings, and this is really a setup for this forum and congressman delaney -- we have tried to do 4 things. we have tried to redefine infrastructure for a new era. we have try to define it essentially as seven sections of infrastructure that really have all their own methods as to how we design them, finance them, deliver them, and how we govern them. from roads and transit to energy and water and so forth. sophisticated economy -- infrastructure means a variety of things, as we all know. we can understand this. not just come up with ideas for execute them.

second, we redefine the impact of infrastructure, right? 2 million jobs in this country, 11% of our jobs. and the incredible thing is these are good jobs. they paid at her wages than many other sectors of the economy. wages thand better many other sectors of the economy. the jobs and that super sector are very good. third, we are trying to redefine what we mean by innovation in superstructure. centuryot build 20th infrastructure for a 21st century economy. particularly the potential for disruption, the ability to deploy it for ways that get better results. and finally, and i image is stepping congressman's delaney's weughts -- or redefining how

look at infrastructure. frankly the entire system is a public-private exercise in the it is states and federalist in design and execution. we are not a country, like many of our competitors, that really just have a central government that basically has a national plan and then does the bulk of the investment. we are a federal republic, and we are a public-private enterprise. and so, as we go forward today, with some excellent innovators around the country who are really doing the hard work for putting forward the vision as to watch infrastructure can look like in the next decade or have century, we really need to think about this and line up to what is a disruptive and pivotal moment. also to line up how we operate as a nation and as a society. with that, i want to introduce i think one of the most innovative

members of congress. john delaney, congressman from maryland's six district, right? district, right? hometown. -- hometown -- washington, d.c. this is really someone coming, not just with private sector in the abstract, but with ideas that can be deployed, again, for a very different kind of moment where the national government needs to be a stable and reliable partner, a platform for investing in this kind of infrastructure that moves our country forward. congressman delaney thomas on the critical committees that really deal with so much about what we're going to talk about today, thank you for coming year. i look forward to your remarks. -- thank you for coming here. i look forward to your remarks. [applause]

bruce, for that very nice introduction and all the work you do. i want to thank everyone for being here and your significant participation in infrastructure week. it is obviously a topic near and dear to my heart. i also want to thank bookings for hosting this and all of your contributions to this topic and generally your conjugations to public policy in this country, which in many ways are singular. it is great to be here. it is great to be part of a brookings event. in my judgment, increasing the infrastructure investment in the united states should be our top 10 messick economic priority by any measure. i say this for really three minutes. increasing the infrastructure investment in the united states should be our top 10 mastech economic priority by any measure. ourer one, it is part of jobs program and it focuses on creating middle skill jobs,

which is what this country means. we are doing a pretty good job creating high skill jobs and a very good job creating low skill jobs, because high skill jobs directly and indirectly drive the creation of low skilled jobs, but what we are really lacking our middle skill jobs, jobs where people can have one job and raise their family. that is the part of the market that has been hollowed out by andtrends of globalization technology. and infrastructure is such a perfect way to create those jobs. you create them directly through the people who build the infrastructure and indirectly around all of the manufacturing that goes with infrastructure. you think about our ability to compete in manufacturing, you realize the kinds of things you have to manufacture for infrastructure, to simplify it, are big and heavy. and the united states has a competitive advantage on

building big and heavy things. the first reason to invest in infrastructure is it creates jobs. i think this point needs to be emphasized. i come from a financial services industry. people often ask me, what do i think are the chances of another financial crisis in the near-term? i think the chances of another financial crisis in the near-term are almost zero. when people ask me what i think are the chances of another jobs crisis, where the effects of globalization and technology continue to accelerate and hollow out the middle class in this country at a much more --id rate than me anticipate then we anticipate? i think the chances of that are pretty high. i think not having a jobs program is pretty shortsighted. the second thing is it makes us competitive. i care deeply about the united states's ability to compete in this world to read having world class infrastructure is critically important to doing

that. it creates jobs. it makes us more competitive in the long term. you look over if time for every one dollar we spend on infrastructure, we get almost two dollars and return. $1.92 to be precise. you can create jobs in the short term, making more competitive in the long term, and pencil out. everyone knows the challenges we face in infrastructure, but it's also a huge opportunity. the numbers are very significant. $3 hear numbers, trillion, $4 trillion. some people even say $5 trillion. to handle an investment of that size, we have to deconstruct how we create infrastructure in this country and make sure we have good a look policy initiatives around all of them. it seems to me the way we create

infrastructure in this country falls into one of four categories. we either create infrastructure by having the government grant money to do that. state governments provide grants. a variety of governments provide grants. most of that infrastructure is stuff that is really related to the common good, right? the second way we build infrastructure is by charging user fees. there is a whole variety of thatcts, as we all know, are based on a user fees scenario. the third way we build infrastructure is the private sector does it, through good public-private partnerships where the private sector is building infrastructure, owning the infrastructure, operating the infrastructure, and it is being used by the public. and the fourth way we create infrastructure in this country is we finance it. someone borrows money, typically a local government, to build something and they have to pay it back over the long term. $3we ever want to close this

trillion, four trillion dollar, $5 trillion gap, we need to do things that are in all 4 of those buckets. we should not think of these as mutually exclusive. that is a good idea, but it doesn't do this. that is the wrong answer. we need multiple tools in our toolkit. if we really want to having meaningful improvement in the infrastructure in this country and make a significant investment in the infrastructure in this country, we have to do it in a lot of different ways. complicated and sophisticated landscape. that's the other thing i like to tell people. have an open mind. all of the tools are virtuous. piece ofain legislation i have been working on for the last hour -- the last year around this challenge really fits into that category -- we grant money, we charge user fees, we finance it. what we have tried to create, for lack of a better term, is a

category killer for financing. in other words, the big 800 pound gorilla that will take care of the financing needs. this is a bill i introduced in the house of representatives almost a year ago and it had a companion bill introduced in the senate almost a month ago. right now this bill is the most significant piece of bipartisan economic legislation and the whole of the congress. we have 31 house republicans on and 31 house democrats. we have half a dozen senate republicans and have a dozen senate democrats. it is a partisan and we are adding members every week. -- it is high partisan and we are adding members every week. the way it breaks down is this. it's actually pretty easy. we launch a large financing entity called the american infrastructure fund, which is designed to be a large-scale bang-on guarantor for states and

local governments around the country to finance any kind of infrastructure. i love the way that bruce framed the different categories of infrastructure. i call them the food groups of infrastructure. this allows date and local governments to use this money for transportation, water, energy, communications, even for education. when you think of the world we will live in in the next 20 or notears from now, if we do think of education facilities as core infrastructure for the united states, i think is crazy. all of these categories are available for financing. it is capitalized upfront with $50 billion. it goes in day one and creates the capital bad for this financing entity and it stays in there for 50 -- creates the this financing entity and it stays in there for 50 years. we believe that it can leverage itself 10 to one in the private market.

it takes that and creates potentially $750 billion. finance $2 it can trillion of infrastructure over 50 years. if you do the math on that that would create 3 million jobs in this country, which are more jobs than exist in my home state of maryland, to put it in perspective. that is what it does. the way it capital -- it is capitalized is unique. government does not put the $50 billion into the entity. it is put in by private companies who buy bonds. very cheap, nongovernment errant bonds. guaranteed they would never make this investment in a normal free market system, but to create an incentive for them to do this, we say for every dollar a u.s. corporation in best in the american infrastructure fund, they get the right ash invests invests in the american

infrastructure fund, they get to ,epatriate overseas money taxation free. we have an international tax problem in this country and it is causing over half of u.s. cash to sit overseas and it is growing at a faster rate than in the united states. willy soon u.s. companies have more cash overseas than they do in the united states. and they are not bringing it back because we have a system and this system is unique in the world where we require the companies to pay tax locally where they earn the money, and when they bring it back to the united states, they have to pay tax. it is a double tax gain. no other country has this. what other countries do is you pay the tax locally and when you bring the money back to the homeland, if you will, you do not have to pay tax. that is why this cash is accumulating overseas. which is why pfizer, for example, is doing these types and versions. they have $60 billion of cash

overseas. if they bring it back, they have to pay $20 billion in taxes. it for at as well use company overseas. we are creating a path for that money to come back tax rate, but is not a free lunch. they have to put money into this american infrastructure fund. we make them buy bonds they would probably never buy. the good news for them is they get to bring back money. the good news for us is we get capitalized without a penny of government spending, and massive infrastructure financing vehicle that will be around for 50 years and make a material difference with this challenge and opportunity we have an infrastructure. the reason the bill is so bipartisan is it brings together two pieces of public policy each party has been spot on right about. we democrats -- i'm a democrat -- we have been

advocating for increased investment in infrastructure in this country for a long time. for all the reasons we talked about. and we have been 100% right about that. my republican colleagues have been pointing out for some time that we need to fix this international tax system, that it is a problem. it is making is not competitive. it is reducing investments in the united states among our largest companies. and guess what? they have been 100%, spot on right about that. this bill fuses together those pieces of public policy and as a result has garnered such significant bipartisan support -- as i said, it's the most significant piece of bipartisan legislation in the congress. it is a big idea. it is an innovative idea. and it is being done in a bipartisan way. in fact we will not add numbers unless we have a companion from the other side. we will have 100 members on each side of the aisle pretty soon with this bill. and recently, in light of the highway trust fund situation --

and i will give it to how the momentum on our bill can be used to potentially do something even bigger -- we have thought about how we take this groundswell of support we have around the partnership to build america act , and we introduce it into authorizations around the highway trust fund. as you know, in congress, we need in forcing actions to do things. and the highway trust fund, which is a disaster in the making, impending insolvency, if you will, could be a huge opportunity if positioned right. what we have said this -- is this -- when we take the fact that there is bipartisan support around increasing our dealing withe and international tax system, but let's do something bigger and deal with the highway trust fund at the same time? -- ifat we have proposed you think about what we're doing with our bill, we are raising the $2 billion of capital from

corporations and allowing them to bring back $200 billion from overseas, because the ratio is four to one. back $200 bringing billion from overseas. there's a lot more money over there. let's bring back all of that money, or let's put in place a mechanism for more of that money to come back, and a let's take additional revenues that can be toerated off that and use it capitalize or pre-fund the highway trust fund for >> years years to -- several get its insolvency up the table. in truth, the highway trust fund should be funded with a load crisisof funds. in a mode, it is what we should do, because we all know the long-term fixes of the highway trust fund are complicated.

how do we deal with that stacks? how do we deal with the fact that the country is becoming increasingly urbanized and a lot of urban dwellers do not drive, but they use the roads because their goods and services, and from those roads? we're not going to figure that out in a couple months. last week i laid out in the thatington post" in idea has gotten a lot of momentum, which builds on the partnership to build america act's bipartisanship, but it is bigger. we are saying, let's take all the money sitting overseas, right, and doing mandatory tax of 10% -- give companies 10 years to pay the money in, but they can bring the money back freely. we create a path for the almost $2 trillion sitting overseas to come back to the united states, which is what most of corporate america wants to do. that money can be used for two things. the first thing it can be used for is to pre-fund the highway trust fund for six years -- in other words the shortfall -- so

we can have a measured and meaningful conversation about how to fix it in the long term and not have to worry about it for the next several years. take 60% of money and do that. take 40% of the money and create the infrastructure fund. and at the same time, let's change our international tax system to move toward a modified territorial system, which is what most of the world does. which is where you pay tax locally, you can bring money back tax-free. tax haven,set up a you will still have to pay tax to bring the money back, but if you are in a place that costs 20% tax, you can bring it back tax-free. so, let's potentially do something bigger. lifted the highway trust fund insolvency off the table for six years, give us time to fix it.

let's take some of the money and create the american infrastructure fund. this way we will walk away with a clear net increase on the amount of money we spent on infrastructure. we will create the jobs. we will make results more competitive. and at the same time let's create the tech structures of the money will flow. this would be so transformative to be short-term jobs ration opportunities in this country and the long-term competitiveness of this country, i think it would be a singular and historic move for us to do in this nation. and the good news is we are coming to this debate from a bipartisan perspective. the momentum on the partnership to build america act proves both parties want to do this. parties want to increase our investment in infrastructure. both parties want to fix our international tax system. one way we will do this is we

will take this and use it not just for the partnership to build america act, but do something bigger. it is so great to have your support. bruce, it's great to have this opportunity to talk. i know you have many other experts that will opine on this subject. i want to thank brookings. and i want to thank all of our individual supporters in this room who have been so helpful on the momentum we have built on the partnership to build america .ct you have been there from the beginning. it has really helped our efforts immensely. i want to thank everyone for taking your time to listen to what i have to say today. again, i am an optimist. i believe we can fix all of these problems and i believe that we are laying out a good first step, and hopefully in 10 or 15 years when we have infrastructure week, we are celebrating all of the success we had. so, thank you. [applause]

>> good morning, everybody. wehink you can see what wanted congressman delaney to provide these remarks for us today. obviously a very thoughtful proposal he has to discuss their in congress. bipartisan. we always like it when it is bipartisan. it's a really elegant solution. it is creative. and boy, we really like the optimist -- the optimism. i think that is an important thing, particularly for the close of infrastructure week. i am a senior fellow here at the brookings institution. puentes.is robert for those of you following on the webcast, following on the tv, i want to invite you to join

the conversation. buildrenew is the hashtag. join the conversation. i just want to recap some of the key themes that we have heard starting back on monday. even though i think we were certainly successful at our initial goal, which was due cap up infrastructure, to push her to the front burner of national policy discourse, -- to push infrastructure to be from burner of national policy discourse, we have to move the conversation to action. having the president, having the vice president talk about it this week was certainly helpful. but we want to make sure this is not just a conversation reverberating throughout the echo chamber here in washington. it obviously matters for all the reasons we talked about. it matters that we fix the highway trust fund. it matters with what happens

during the midterms. but these are not the only conversations about infrastructure in america today. it is just not the whole entire story. it is really not even reflective of washington's conversations. you heard from me how grossman. there are all of these ideas out there. we need to get down to brass tacks and figure out what is possible, what we can do in america today. i think it is also not reflective of the conversation, because it is so very broad and multifaceted. it is not just about roads and bridges. obviously that matters for all the reasons we know it matters, particularly after the horrible winter we had. there will be lot holes and all sorts of things going on. we know transportation matters. but narrowing the conversation to rose and bridges, we failed to recognize the multifaceted and bridges, we failed to ignite the multifaceted way we have

infrastructure in this country. as bruce mitch and, we think of infrastructure in the is -- mentioned, we think of infrastructure in these seven different ways. it's also trade logistics. it is energy. it is water. telecommunications. public works. public buildings. the congressman talked about education as one. folks like dell talk about other infrastructure. these seven really capture the essence of the debate. we know these things work together. it is clearly processing systems. all these things are fundamentally connected. when it comes down to what we need to do today, which is how do you deliver projects in an era of real fiscal constraints and political read lock in many places, we have to deal -- gridlock in many places, we have to deal with these different sectors. and it varies dramatically. what they are doing with

.elecommunication it is not the same thing they do with light rail and other areas. other things we heard throughout the week -- infrastructure matters to the american economy. this is something we heard at the very beginning with the big event in the chamber of commerce. we brought and business leaders to talk fundamentally about infrastructure, not just what it is doing on the ground, but how it enables them to do their business and compete locally. clearly we need to create more jobs in this country. we put out a report earlier this week. 11% of u.s. jobs are in one of these different sectors of infrastructure. not even the indirect jobs. not even the guy who was cutting the hair. the direct job of these sectors is 11% of the workforce. said by the feet

afl-cio, other organizations. the other conversation about infrastructure in america today -- clearly the washington political conversation is in major disruption. no doubt about it. the other is demographic. talked about the demographic changes and the growth we are expecting. this is not like parts of western asia or europe. we are growing country. how we accommodate that growth and create jobs and how preferences are changing -- all of that very important, very disruptive. some of us discussed the role of trade logistics. just given the disruptive changes happening broadly around the global economy and given disruptions around lima change -- also a big theme this week. how do we design water infrastructure so it is sustainable and resilient?

obviously water infrastructure is near and dear to our hearts on this thing. but i think the main preoccupation we heard and the main disruption that kept coming .p is finance how do we get things done today in this difficult era? but i think that is also where we heard the most about solutions. not sold or bullet stop action not silver bullet style solutions. not silver bullet style solutions. i think it is clear for areas like transportation, we will have to fund them in traditional ways. state tax,bout the tolling on the interstates. measures about ballot and transportation for america and the center for transportation excellence had a great workshop, helping states

get ready to do campaigns around ballot measures, to go to the voters and see if they are willing to raise money or transportation infrastructure. we know they are doing this already and that is something we will probably see emerging in 2015. we heard a lot about new partnerships for getting things done. the combination between philanthropic and the public and private sector. we are selling off public assets for purely private processes -- but trying to figure out ways we can get things done, leveraging private sector expertise, capital, and connecting that with traditional areas of infrastructure so we can get things done in a unique way. so, the bipartisan policy center highlighted a lot of these ideas along with the west coast infrastructure exchange them what they are doing in washington, california, oregon, developish columbia to standardization, transparency, and a pipeline of projects that works for the public and private sector. it is true none of these ideas

in innovation will solve all of our problems. there is no solar bullet solution to everything we face today -- silver bullet solution to everything we face today. true that true partnerships of government entities, private financiers, firms, and philanthropies are going to have to do the hard work in the united states to get the stuff done. it's not going to be easy. going to beit's easy. but i am encouraged by all the stuff we heard this week, new innovators, and new generation of activities to fill that gap. that leads into the discussion we want to have today for this great panel we are going to set up now. i'm going to introduce the quickly. their bios are in the back. they will be providing framing remarks highlighting innovations in which they are engaged, and also their general thoughts as experts in the broader

infrastructure conversation going on now. first of all, we will have dan kead. he is the director of the detroit future city office. he will talk about the range of engagements, etc., not just your city services like water, lighting, energy, transportation, but how well that relates to economic growth and neighborhood stability. dan was trained as an architect. he recently became the father of twins. good luck with that. [laughter] it probably will be harder than fixing detroit in some ways. the founderill be investment partners. it is a coalition of cities working to create new public-private partnerships to create resilient partnerships

across water, energy, and transportation. i think she may be the only person appear who has a patent. tsay, thebe shin-pei director of the transitcenter organization. has a variety responsibility making transportation more sustainable from the policy side and on the practical side. -- was most recently have ericy we will shaw, the director for salt lake city liberation community and economic development. he is responsible for a wide variety of things, transportation, building services, development, even in arts council. i do not know how he spends his

spare time or if he has any spare time, but we will hear from eric in just a bit. formal staffe any presentations. we do not have comfy chairs this time. but given this week, the excitement we had around this week, we didn't want this to be more active, more interactive. we will go to the audience multiply quickly for questions. for those of you following on the webcast or tv, go ahead and use #rebuildrenew. that into the get conversation, certainly during the week. with that, let me bring up dan. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you all for allowing me to speak with you this morning. screenge you see on the

is one you have probably seen before of detroit, right? it is one that tends to illustrate this investment depopulation and conventional thinking that may have led to both of those things. for those of us in the future city office, a group that implements with a host of partners, public, private, philanthropic, and otherwise, we think it is something different. we think it may be the site of an incredible opportunity for transformative innovation. particularly transformative innovation within infrastructure and looking at things differently then we have looked at them in the past -- than we have looked at them in the past. we can stabilize the city, generate revenue, and in short that we cane establish we first century systems to mitigate the impact

of some of our older 19th century systems. begin to drive up implement actually, as we do them. ensure equity along the way. and lastly provide a lasting resilience to a city and a region that really does not have it, but certainly needs it. and as we do this, as an implementation office, and we have begun a few projects on this and i will talk about that this morning. we think there are a few lessons for everyone here. not just for legacy city is like detroit through the united states or north america, -- not just for legacy cities like detroit, but through the night america --r north the united states or north america. solutions were detroit could also work in legos, right? we will work towards the polarization of a legacy city in the u.s. it may be seen as a line. it is in fact a circle, right?

the proximity between these two realities is quite close. some of the things we're beginning to work on right now that we should talk about his first green infrastructure. the ability we have the ability to clean our air, clean our water, begin to use the spaces to bring in carbon buffers. in detroit we have expensive , as youof freeways might imagine, and many of these freeways sit directly next to never. we have three times the rate of childhood asthma compared to the national average. that is not my chance. had we used this plant to plant specific trees to block these old matter from getting into these neighborhoods? -- diesel matter from getting into these neighborhoods? how might we deploy blue infrastructure systems.

this is particularly important given the deja vu -- they lose we are experiencing in d.c. outside right now. of perfectlyles vacant land. perfectly vacant land. there is not a structure on it. that is roughly equivalent to the size of manhattan. how might we use the size of manhattan to deal with the bigger issue, which is storm water runoff in a city like detroit, especially given that detroit sits on 22% of the world's freshwater supply? freshwateru.s. supply? we need to be better stewards. in detroit, every time we get half oh -- a little over half an inch of rain, the storm water goes into the catch basin, we overflow our system and we direct discharge into the detroit river and ultimately the great lakes. we are putting raw human waste out there. we need to do better than that.

this is a global asset. we think we can make those changes by the flowing very soft systems, new 21st century blue infrastructure systems to soak up this water, manage the hydrology, and remove the 19th century systems that cost us copious amounts of money, money we do not have as a city and i'm sure the federal government would like not to have to find either. we can use this land for food and energy, right? we can think about how food production in a city can work to satisfy the needs of the city as a whole. can start a revolution in a city that has typically been defined by food deserts. we are now seeing small-scale agricultural projects spring up. we think that these things can be occupied across this land, providing jobs as we do it, providing food, but also energy through biomass and a whole host of other things. detroit can lead in this regard. and lastly in many of these

areas, you can tell, it is not as if nothing is there, right? there is a house here. there's probably a house around the corner. miles, in the 26 square 90,000 peopleu, live here. they have needs. these are people who are older, people of color, people with poor access to mobility -- excuse me, people with poor access to health care services. these people are isolated. we need to rethink how they can move around in the city. the idea is, no one is getting dislocated here. how can we build these on-call paratransit networks that will allow people to get around more easily without requiring a dedicated fixed route of to come down their street five times a day when only one person needs to go to the doctor on a tuesday? these are the things we can think about, a whole platform of opportunity around areas that in the past have indicated our

failure. for detroit, it is all about flipping these liabilities into assets and we will continue to do that as we move forward. thank you. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. vallhala. shalini i am the founder and ceo of refocus partners. thank u for braving the rain. i was going to ask you all to imagine the rain in your city. picture all of that water running off through your streets

through large pipes and headed , or water treatment plants as dan described, straight into our lakes and rivers. when the system works well, it be system is designed to keep our water clean, protect us from floods. on days when the system fails, you see reason is that flood, sewers that back up into our communities and our water bodies. we need to think of these challenges in different ways. cities across the country are dealing with this problem. it is not just washington, d.c. today. many of these systems -- many of these cities have systems that are 100, 1 50 years old. they are not designed for the way they are used today. we have a partnership of eight cities across the u.s. and leading firms to rethink how we design and finance our systems

like our water system. think back on that water system, with all the rain that has come in today. imagine how it works. it works like a giant funnel. our cities are built to catch those water and brush it out underneath our streets and carry it out to lakes and rivers. now i want you to picture that city working more like a sponge. imagine our roads could absorb water. imagine we could plant street trees or put in wetlands that hold that water in place instead of having it all rush out at the same time? that is a very different type of infrastructure. you're talking about replacing pipes under your streets and old water mains and creaky treatment plants with tens of thousands of small pieces and parts. that absorbsnt water, places to catch and hold water. think urban bathtubs. reinvest does, we work with

directly to create finance will portfolios of infrastructure. we have eight city partners across the country from miami beach to hoboken, new jersey out to milwaukee and el paso. these cities are not like each other, but they all face the same challenges, which is they need to build infrastructure for the next 100 years, and find ways to pay for it with increasingly strained public budgets. how do we do this? i will give you two examples. one from miami. one from hoboken. the city of miami beach is a city that has been featured in the news frequently. when you hear about resilience, often you will hear about miami beach. miami beach on a sunny day has flooding that sometimes gets up to two feet high. this is surreal, for anyone who has not experienced this. our team went out there and we

could not believe it until city officials drove us to places where there was just water in the roads. problem is not the flooding from the rain. the problem is the seawalls are so old, they are pushing the city at high tide. they are coping well now, but they know this can't last forever. we're working with them to redesign the seawalls, to think how you hold up the city differently, but also pay for it differently. rethinking property taxes and insurance rates in one of the most expensive insurance areas in the country. hoboken faces similar challenges. it was on the front page of newspapers for weeks after hurricane sandy hit. at one point, the city had 14 feet of standing water. hoboken is one square mile.

teeny tiny. and it is shaped like a bowl. it was built for a different time. the city knows they need to do different things. we are working with hoboken on some of their empty industrial parcels of land to think through how do we combine types of infrastructure across sectors? not just thinking about water, but where can we build cisterns whenground to hold water the supers overflow, when it rains. but also combine those things with parking garages that can serve as flood overflow spaces intenseeriods of really rain, like hurricane sandy? and beyond that, put things on the surface that create recreational spaces and parks for a city that is incredibly dense. i want you to think of a layer cake of infrastructure. it is not just about building one thing that is important. it is about building a whole system. when you think of a whole

system, sort of counterintuitively to finance infrastructure, we're interested in finding multiple ways to pay for the same project, where you can combine parking fees with water system user fees, with attracting corporations to demonstrate technologies in innovation parks. i want you to picture your favorite science museum and imagine being able to showcase for communities, for kids, what resilience looks like or the next 100 years in a public park. show companies, this is how we can generate electricity from our wastewater system. or what it looks like to turn waste into energy. a lot of our challenges associated with infrastructure, and especially with green and resilient infrastructure, is when we are successful in building the systems, it is a politician's worst nightmare. because success is something that doesn't happen.

the storm hits, but a community was not flooded. that is fantastic for exactly one year. and the next year you are fired. [laughter] what we're doing is finding new ways not just to combine these totems, to pay for them, but make sure those successes are clear and visible for the public entities trying to make these changes. illustration of our process. all of you will find this familiar. on the left-hand side, you see a collection of what a city means. cities know their needs and credibly well. they know they need new water systems, new electricity , toems, to repave roads bettere broadband to serve underserved communities. city governments tend to be organized in silos. you have the transportation office, the broadband office, the education office.

banksre interestingly, tend to think in layers. they want projects where they are not the only ones investing and you can stack up capital and investors to be able to pay for a single thing. us and what ouroc partners at reinvest to do is work to realign systems designed with financing. our goal is to take what a city needs -- imagine your idea of a dream house -- turn that into a blueprint consistent with a city's priorities, and also make the leap to a mortgage document. we have a lot of cities with a lot of projects, and they are going into banks with their equivalent of a dream house. and we need help translating those ideas into investable projects. this is not a problem of not enough money, and it's certainly not a problem of not enough

meat, as you heard from detroit. our challenge is to combine these things, to get from ideas to action, in ways that are clear and replicable. what we do is a little bit like doing an olympics for what a city needs every day. and we work not just on the systems design, thinking about what the great infrastructure looks like or how to build a sponge, but we will connect that with legal experts on how do you design a public-private partnership that can build 10,000 pieces of infrastructure and not just one water treatment plant? and how are different ways you can ring together different revenue streams, as congressman delaney mentioned, with user fees, but also savings, the savings from the things that don't happen. when my basement doesn't flood and i didn't collect from the insurance company, how do i catch that money and redirect it to the project?

what we do is not just help cities rebuild what they had for the last 100 years. we aim to get them to what they need for the next 100. thank you. [applause] hi, i'm going to show a painting or collage because i am part of a new civic philanthropy and we are just getting started. it's really exciting to talk to you a little bit about what's going on with us. this is a beautiful piece by an artist named val briton and she worked with the concept of mapping the unknown. you can say she makes the unknown quite beautiful. i wanted to use this as a starting point for how we are thinking about infrastructure

and the role we can play as a civic philanthropy in making a change. and we did atarted scan of the field and there are so many wonderful, amazing experts out there, banging on the doors and making the change but change is scary for so many people. what is scary is the unknown. we want to try to bring together all the people, the partners, the organizations, the cities, the private sector in making the unknown more legible, to explore this area and figure out what steps we can take to partner together to make these things happen. one thing that we started to look into was improving the rider experience of getting around the city. we know what it is like to be unable to hail a cab, to wait for the bus that never shows up, too never know when the bus is going to show up. we all understand this. this is one of the greatest inhibitors of people getting two

jobs. we talking about infrastructure creating jobs which is an enabler of the labor market and jobs and people accessing jobs. it is a huge underpinning of our economy but it's one of those things that is sort of overlooked by conventional transportation as usual. usually, we serve it up.with thg agencies we have to really organize it. frankly, that's no longer going to work. people have really unusual schedules. you have people in detroit who need to go to the doctor once a month on a tuesday in the middle of the afternoon. other people work from home part-time so the schedules are no longer routine and predictable as usual. a huge number of participation from the private sector and the public that is creating this sharing economy. that is sort of a buzzword.

what's really amazing about this is people are participating. this really has been an able by technology and smart phones and there's an equity issue with smart votes -- smartphones but there is emerging evidence of 73% of americans who have smartphones, many of them also rely on smart as the only access to the internet. we are just seeing the glimmer of what can happen. no longer the top down supply-side way of looking itngs -- that things come it is the demand side. how do you get people to move around? how do you create a platform of options? in the private sector, is taking the lead in making this happen. they are doing this in spite of all the constraints. you have all probably heard about companies being banned from cities. i think this is the wrong

approach. how can you figure this out? they are providing a service to your citizens in a way that challenges everything we know but it is making people able to get around the city. that is an area where we have to be courageous. we have to explore the unknown and i don't think it's a terribly negative thing to do. i think there is a lot we can figure out together. leaving them out of the conversation, that will never happen. some things we are doing to create the environment for those conversations to take place -- we want our work to be rooted in evidence. we're sponsoring a major study, 12,000 person sample size on public attitudes on transit. we will build releasing results from that survey throughout the course of this year. the second thing we are doing is

what kind of leadership does it take to make these changes happen? we have seen cities across the country or the last 10 years be able to lead in an ovation. -- in innovation. they have been doing it without a big federal policy push with mayors and commissioners and have been able to figure out and rewrite the playbook on how our cities work. what does it take? does it take a great civics sector? does it take a great leader? we want to figure that out. we want to create situations were these different sectors come together and talk about things. right now it is the wild west in l a, the pioneers going out and staking a claim. when that happens and they are being restrained, there is a lot of competition that is negative. they are being confined by updated policy and unable to make progress on updating that policy. we want to create a situation

where people can actually come together and talk about these things. we are 10 and 11, holding a summit in washington on mobility. leaders, policymakers are coming together to talk about the new solutions that could be working. we are also taking a look at what does exist and how can we update governments. --governance. how can we define new leadership? what kind of relationship do we need to think about? alsos something that will we will see in partnership with chicago later this year. finally, we are really interested in in changing practice. that theed earlier leaders are rewriting the playbook on these efforts. we think partnerships with cities, with the civic sector, with the private sector and going and trying to demonstrate and implement these new ideas is

the way to go. are outw, the pioneers there figuring it out on their own and it takes a civic organization to ring people together and combine the public benefit with the private interests and maximize overall profits. i hope you'll join us in our journey. we are just getting started. thank you for letting me explain transit center to you. [applause] >> hello. , i am the eric shaw bureaucrat of this bunch. in my spare time, think about infrastructure. which is why i am here. i am really excited talk to you about our transit rail infrastructure in the salt lake city region. it has been the manifestation of a significant amount of coordination and collaboration between cities, counties, and

the state. givenas not an easyfeat the fact that salt lake city is an island of blue in a sea of red. we all came together to work on a common goal which was improved air quality. we have some of the worst air quality in the country. and increasing the economic development potential for the region. there is lasting impact for this in the fact that 80% of the people who live in utah live in the 100 mile stretch between ogden and provo with salt lake city being the largest city in the middle, 180,000. our population balloons at 370,000 during the day. a lot of the success was realized by having strong regional partners. our salt lake chamber was an advocate for regional transportation choices. has done a plan that has

been fully accepted and implemented by our partners. and the utah transit authority which has constructed and operates an amazing and efficient regional transportation system. we have estimated the economic impact of our regional transportation system is about $7 billion which is amazing. i want to talk to you about three different systems we have within our region. tracks line, our light rail line. it requires similar collaboration within the city to realize its success. transportation, economic development, and planning in my department. we were able to collaborate looking at changing our zoning, housing policy, and working with stakeholders and developers to map out the development potential of our light rail corridors. our first one opened up in 1999.

it connected downtown to the university of utah. it cost about $200 million. to date, it has created $1.6 billion in investment and about 50 projects. it still ongoing. ournt to talk about one of other lines the just opened up last year that the next downtown to the airport. it goes along north temple which is our main street that goes through the west side which is one of our communities that has the lower performance in our economic indicators. just about connecting a nice place to the university but how we catalyze main street and her committees in need and how do we focus on supporting small businesses but also connecting our major job centers? this goes from downtown to the airport and includes a major rival employers but also focuses on small businesses. if you cannot see, the light rail is in front of the red iguana which has the best chili

colorado in the country. i can attest to that. it's a family owned business that has been around for 55 years. it is one of the fastest-growing small businesses in the country located in the cbd. they are growing at 17% per year. it's amazing. the chili colorado is really good, by the way. in creating this rail is it allowed only market to come in a and for us to connect tourists and residents to enjoy the outstanding chili colorado. for other small businesses, it created the same opportunities and the fact we were connecting not only job centers but also creating the small opportunities for the small businesses. since that line is fairly new, it was a $200 million cost. we proposed a thousand new housing units at which 550 are under construction.

this low line in the middle is our new streetcar line. under the leadership of the mayor and our city council and the south salt lake city council and the uta, we are rebuilding her streetcar system within salt lake city. this was a $50 million project that came from tiger money and a match and apparently it happened pretty quickly. we identified the right-of-way in 2009. we secured the tiger grant in 2011. we had a revenue service in 2013. we know how to get things done salt lake city. it has transformed the community. ne stands for streetcar line and south salt lake line and stands for sugarhouse. sugarhouse was our bohemian community or all the teenagers hung out and now is an economic hub, the second one in our

region. we have had form -- 400 mullion dollars in private investment, 400,000 square feet of retail, 400,000 square feet of office and new housing units being created in the past four years. for our commuter rail which is the front runner at the bottom, that commuter rail was a $600 million project that opened up in 2013. it changed how we thought about -- how her suburbs thought about economic development and rail. one of the sweet spot between salt lake city and provo has become the home to a new campus and 700,000ay, square feet of new office. our suburbs right now are use and about increased it is changing how our city is developed in our region is developing but also has had the

catalytic effect of thinking about our downtown hubs in salt lake city and ogden and revitalize them to think about how they can better transform their downtowns and their hubs. in the end, i want to say that all the investment and infrastructure also includes people. in salt lake city, we did a study and found while we have a great regional system, the majority of the residents in salt lake city make shorter trips and would make more frequent trips. we are priced at a regional rate. $200,000,le to put in partnered with the utah transit authority and created an annual pass specifically for salt lake residence at the price of $360 per year. pricet -- [laughter] i am so amazed and proud about this project.

we put a significant amount of staff time into it like what the name should be called, the hive pass, but it has created the goal of reducing the trips of increasing ridership, of being responsive to the local functions versus regional functions and we are seeing an buyer mental targets. thus far, we have sold 1500 of them. we have a target of about 7000. we will see this happen. andre outraging to renters low income communities to make sure they can do this. that brings me to my final point -- talk aboutto economic development and show how is creating jobs and how it's creating housing but in the if we arethis ismoot not creating economic opportunities. one of the best things we have who wente have a guy out of homelessness but obeys --

but was able to secure $360 per year for transit passengers able to connect him from his new house in north temple to his new job at sugarhouse. that is what this work is about. thank you very much. [applause] >> that was great. that's exactly the kind of conversation we were hoping to tee up following the congressman and the discussion we have had here this afternoon. we intentionally want a mix of folks and want to have a mix of public and private actors. that was one of the common themes we heard. it takes a bunch of different people to get these things done. because infrastructure is getting more complex and is

multifaceted and because we have different motivations and different endgames, it requires a bunch of different people to work together to make things happen. we also really appreciate that these are happening in specific places. the national conversation is very help all but once we get down to it, we have to talk about what this means on the ground in u.s. cities. i appreciated that part of it. start, this is an optimistic conversation so far. i think it will help us understand where the challenges are. i want to ask each of you, given all we have talked about, what are your biggest headaches were you wake up every day and you have to deal with that one thing. you want to break through one area. i will start with you. what could you change if you could with what you're doing now? building things faster.

it is been great to talk to our federal partners about our streamline and approval processes. we are trying to bundle as much as possible so that when the money shows up, we can build faster and not wait, plan, get approval, build. how can we lay out the full system now so when the investment comes up, we can capitalize on it quickly. >> i think the biggest challenges is creating a new culture of working. the sharing aspect really calls for a collaboration. collaboration,or civic, private, public sector collaboration and that is unusual in the decades we have had top-down supply-side provision of transportation. inen i find myself conversations where i just think

this is not a transaction, we need to work together. i have nothing to give you but i want to work with you. that is engendering a new culture of working. detroit,k for us in there are two things to head-on -- one is more transactional and one is at a higher level. gaining assets to capital to do many things we are describing can be a challenge on a good day. asngs in detroit are not good as we would like them to be. arelso recognize there opportunities of funding and we are seeking natural host of partners. it is difficult to illustrate the value proposition to an investor. know massive vacancy areas are opportunities for growth and stability down the road but are indirect. openader issue of the

narrative -- in detroit, i took the time to articulate a story not typically told, the positive side of how we might utilize these vacant spaces. are highlyose spaces relatable to the efforts underway in areas like our central business district, or midtown district. these are areas where we are seeing incredibly robust growth, 14,000 new jobs in the last two years in group -- in downtown. it's significant investment overall. rail line is coming into play. we don't want to bring everybody down and challenge them with the narrative i talk about. we want to put that in relationships of the more conventional investments that are necessary in illustrating how these two things support one another. challenges -- i have two.

i find that when talking about infrastructure, we are able to do incredible things when you get groups of people trying to solve an actual problem. i find that nothing gets done when it is a discussion about an issue. the more i think we can ship from issues to problem solving, i think we will see greater success on the ground. havether wish list item i is to drop a lot of the jargon that dominates the space. i come out of the federal government. i can hold my own on acronyms. need torastructure, we build things but have them pay for themselves and create multiple types of value. you do not need to lodge in the with an equityr discussion. we need to understand where the money is coming from and that we use it. >> this is something we have been testing out here. we are trying to redefine what we mean by infrastructure. the word -- no one knows what there is -- what it means.

it, you get down to everything is designed differently. what you are trying to do at your firm is to marry these things intentionally. challenge?igger is that just how it is done? or is the way we are trying to break it down aggregating infrastructure? does that make any sense? >> i think the opportunities are the theme of infrastructures. we have experience 50 years were we cannot build freestanding systems we originally built 100 years ago or 50 years ago. the discussion put cities at a disadvantage because it does not give them a chance to solve problems. when you repave euros, is much easier to put in an empty pipe to lay broadband and have a company tear up the street a

second time. it is cheaper for the company and the city. >> i say that all the time. isi think aggregation important but we spend a huge amount of our time and bureaucratic jiu jitsu. just because it has not and done, does not mean it is not allowed and simultaneous translations. we speak government and law and engineering and finance and a big art of is making the idea successful. >> anyone else on the? for all of you, you are trying to solve other problems, create opportunity so the infrastructure is not the driver. it is enabling you to do what you're trying to do, right? do you want to expand on that? thinking about the growing economy and planning for the future so new people will be

coming in using the infrastructure. -- that ourt we are firm is thinking about doing it is with culture changes like not getting into the jargon, creating greater legibility, creating greater literacy and craving leadership capability so you can handle the double discussions without dumbing everything down. us, in detroit, we are trying to make sure that the investments we put in place today and many of them are not terribly sexy -- --sexy as detroit may be [laughter] they will yield significant results down the road for generations. these are they plays we are trying to make. these are 15-year efforts to

move things forward. >> does that message resonate in the long-term? some folks are looking for immediate relief. betweennd of mediate the immediacy and the long-term reality. everybody wants everything tomorrow. there are many folks in detroit who are in extreme need. there are also people in detroit who have extreme expectations who don't actually live in that need. people understand the issues we face there and many other cities across the u.s. can be dealt with overtime. they will take generations. one thing we asked ourselves in detroit to think of is to think beyond our own block or neighborhood and think of the city at large. you have to think about your own time, that these things are actually going to bear fruit for our children, not, perhaps, for ourselves overall. it is something that people need to wrap their minds around.

what we see as an opportunity down the road given the infrastructure efforts we have see based on past mid-1970's, ahe major federal play was submitted for a light-rail system. it was going to come into place and be fully operational by 1992, the year i graduated from high school. because wehappened had to seek regional cooperation and that one county opt out and everything fell through and federal dollars and we had a state match and it deployed a circus train that does not connect many folks too many thanks. where detroit is today and we look at salt lake city. we look at denver. we look at all these other cities in which those investments were made at that point and what that has done for

them from a regional perspective from prosperity to equity and we know how far we have fallen behind and now would have to surge forward. detroit and i say 50 years from now, if our economy changes, will we have built their infrastructure in a way that reads a resilient city? can we think about vacant property rules now or think about infrastructure right now and change those prophecies so we can be night amick? it's -- and be dynamic? to respond to that on a long-term basis, there is a deep dark circular -- secret with most governments and cities of that we lose my today and we have long-term problems, it means we will lose more money in the long term. helping committees find solutions is to figure out what they are spending money on today that they don't want to spend money on. many cities have a basement cleanup fund every time the sewers back up.

they are not allowed to use that money to pay to repair the water main. it's not about thinking about uncertain things 50 years from now. start with where you are failing now. i can guarantee you that's well -- where you will fail worse in the future. [laughter] so much for optimism. >> the one common thing i have heard from each of you in different ways was about partnerships. it has become so clear in our where- it's not the thing we think about public/private partnerships. it's about these different ways that public and private and government and nonprofits can come together to solve problems. the infrastructure stuff is almost derivative of that. want to echo some of that? how important is this to delivering things? >> i think the partnerships are

imperative. the idea is to stick to the project. everyone wants their project for different reasons and that's ok. we don't need to have one common outcome or one common message. if the chamber wanted for economic development and the mayor of salt lake city wanted for air quality, who cares, it got built and everyone can use it. that is one of the things that a successful partnership in utah is about. we all want to see it will. -- see it built. >> in detroit, there's a sense over the last few years that people have moved beyond the kind of tried of ownership on something. i nothing much of substance would occur if a were not through partnerships in detroit. you are talking about public and private arrangements and local and federal things but you're also talking about connections through philanthropy and connections to community groups

to have access maybe not to financial capital but to human capital. we are finding those moments of greatest successor when all of those things are brought together. i was thinking about the partnerships. the peer to peer sharing that is happening now, people are able to share risk and reap the rewards for doing that. on the flap to the side, one thing we did -- on the philanthropy site, we decided to operate as philanthropy to because we wanted to direct and have input on these projects of people did not fall back to the way they usually do things. we wanted to keep them on track on taking risk and being brave. aree kind of partnerships dynamic. >> it's essential.

we have to do things together. we will keep talking about that. i will violate my rule but i want to throw it open for folks to ask questions. go ahead and identify your self and your affiliation and ask a question which ends in a? -- question mark. >> i'm with the national association of railroad passengers. how do you six english of the importance? you need to show these are not just important things to have economy, invest in the what will exist without it?? >> how do we make infrastructure not about infrastructure's

sake. what is most important? >> it is finding those places that understand the problem and its absence. as devastating as hurricane sandy was, it woke up a lot of communities to what happens when they don't do something. there are many different catalyst out there. don't have to wait for a disaster but pick the moments where a resource is stretched to have a conversation with the community about with their lives would look like in the absence of investment. >> has sandy change that conversation on the ground? or is it like the minneapolis bridge collapse? it seems like that is stuck? >> it is definitely stuck and we have to applaud cities like hoboken that have taken a hands-on approach to them reworking everything. they are working with the department of energy, working on rebuild by design to

rework the entire water and flood management systems. they're working with us. it has stuck and it's changed out the urgency but also the sense of what is involved. it's not just the one sector problem. every time we had a station open up, the governor came out, the mayor came out and we all cheered. the first person bought a pass in wheelchairs of the idea is someone cannot say this system does not work. you have to celebrate and articulate and show that every iteration is a win. >> what got that done? >> really smart people and amazing staff. that's my shadow to them. that's that's my shout out to them. >> other questions? i want to direct this to you,

rob. i sampled some of these event so i don't know how much this has been talked about. we are in a situation of enormous need, some opportunities, and scarce public resources. we have to be able to prioritize, to choose, sometimes within sectors and sometimes across sectors and we have new needs. some things were not on our radar five or 10 years ago, the fact that we have to prepare for 3m forefoot increases in sea levels in the next few decades. that's another set of needs. i have been struck by the fact that we do not have in this messy federal republic of ours a really good analytical infrastructure planning or

capital programming process. how do we make decisions better in which some these are viewed as more important than others? some opportunities are more beneficial than others. what is the role of the federal states andin driving localities and metropolitan regions to establish these systems? there are very few places that have effective analytical and decision-making processes about infrastructure investment. how do we change and improve that situation? >> i will take a crack at the non-federal level. on the local side on prioritizing, one of the things that is fascinating that is going on is the openness in sharing information and data from the city government to the public.

catalyzed amazing analysis by just the public. they have an interest in functioning transportation. they want to be able to get around. city bike in new york city recently released a set of data and the reuben center did an analysis and show that during a subway delay, there were more trips taken near those subway stations immediately as soon as the mta release the notice of a delay overtaxed, there were more trips by bikes being taken around transit stations than other places. it was only during that time, not a recurring trip. it was just in response to the delay. beingn see that by bikes picked up closer to transit stations which means we now know where the transit hubs are and where people are making the last mile effort where they can use a boost in getting connected to major transit uhbs.

those are under examined areas with open data, there is a better potential to understand where we should be putting our dollars. >> it does not have to be a formal process. how does the plan tie into another plan? i don't think that question happens a lot and i am fortunate in having those divisions under me and we have about 12 planning efforts happening now from bicycles to trains to housing. i am constantly asking where they connect and how they overlap or use the same language or the same data. longad of it being one infrastructure effort, how do you align the existing efforts and make sure they say the same thing and representing things the same white and having aligned time horizons. ? this is exactly what we are

trying to put forward. hankering in washington, there is good stuff going on up there. there's a much more optimistic message. this is happening across the country. you are right that we've got supersized challenges and things we could not have predicted and massive things we have to wrestle with but it will come from the bottom up. it will not be top down and it won't read to him by passing another piece of legislation from the federal level. once we start to see all the facts going on, the federal government will respond at some point. they should not be doing nothing. there is a national freight program. where one of the only industrialized countries that does not have one. --a time of severe conflict fiscal constraints on these challenges we have to focus on,

it's got to come from the bottom up. question here? >> thank you. i am a retired government engineer. i have mostly been overseas for 35 years. one of the biggest returns on investment that i see in critical infrastructure is conduit of operations and deal with things day to day to keep the society moving forward. london are old infrastructure but very critical to the financial stability of the planet. have we taken any lessons from those cities of things to learn? as an efficient as they are, that seems to be very effective. say in the case of new york following sandy, the dimension of the resilience conversation blossomed nationally and it landed hard for us in detroit perhaps for

issues not dissimilar to those in new york. this is the world financial center. intotroit, it rotated equity and tremendous challenge to develop a truly resilient city but also has some of the greatest need for it. 42% of the population are below the property line in detroit. -- below the poverty line in detroit. here you have a challenge where just slight disruptions can begin to undermine a lot of the existing systems, many of them are informal in detroit. ultimately, you can have loss of life, you can have significant challenges. inare trying to see the ways bumbling infrastructure. how can we with hard or soft

systems begin to bring these things together so those investments are being made to launch new businesses and support committee action? this is so everything happens along the way develops a much stronger network to keep things going in a time of challenge knowing there are some folks who will never have the means to escape something like that. learning from new york or london -- i think you are a great example of being able to translate within context and having leadership to do it and sensitive way that reflects the community assets. i think that is the imperative. it's interesting to be looking for what the common challenges are but in the solution building, they are very contextual. example,e a specific

the rockefeller foundation letter process after hurricane sandy on working with the governor to plan for the next 100 years. within that, there was manic don't that i loved. it was from someone at a cable company who was describing that the cable companies knew where the power was out faster than the power companies. set top ox is blank when the power is interrupted. it's beaded up operations and restoration of power tremendously. when we talk about partnerships and open data, not just public to private. it is private to private in some cases this industries also live in silos. we need to be able to find those opportunities to create a continuity of operations across sectors. private industry is underpinning most of the need and resource. >> we have just barely started to scratch the service.

-- surface. we have to move on. have asked more questions or raise more questions than we have answered which is not about thing. we will keep the conversation going but please join me in thanking our great panelists. [no audio] [applause] [applause] while they are getting off the stage, i want to introduce our final speaker who will be greg kelly, the global chief at carsonofficer brinkerhoff. they are in infrastructure firm with 14,000 employees. this fits into the discussion about future and innovation. the firm is deploying new technologies and importing lessons from metropolitan areas around the world. this is the right way to close out the suite.

please join me in welcoming greg kelly. [applause] good morning. this is the closing session for infrastructure week. i want to take a moment to acknowledge all the individuals and organizations and their host of brookings to putting together a terrific week. the speakers we just heard from this morning really underscore the port in the -- the importance of this topic. let's give them a quick round of applause. [applause] when i first spoke with rob and talked about the opportunity to come here and speak of brookings at the conclusion of infrastructure week. it was probably the easiest decision i had to make a long time. we have been doing this for close to 130 years. we take great pride in reshaping cities and regions across the globe.

to coming in here to advance the conversation about that and offer some perspective was a great opportunity. thank you for that invite. we plan and design infrastructure across the globe. in the past year, i've canada,ly spent time in the u.k. and throughout europe and asia and the middle east and australia and new zealand and major cities across the globe. i will use that perspective to talk about what we do well here and perhaps where some of those differences are in the u.s. conversationthe around three key themes -- four key themes. the first is technology, the second generational attitudes, the third is delivery and financing, and fourth i will bring up back to the role of government. the first is something we all face -- the on rest of -- the onrush of changing technology.

our business of infrastructure has not been a hotbed for technological change. the romans invented concrete which was only slightly a latecomer compared to the wheel. new technologies today are becoming more and more common in our business. advanced materials, affordable solar power, electric vehicles are a few of the innovations that have the potential to change how we do business. two new technology stand above the rest and the magnitude of their potential effects -- one is already with us and the other is in the not-too-distant horizon. they will not change how we build infrastructure so much as how we use it. the smartphone and the autonomous vehicle. each by itself is revolutionary. either of them could be a game changer. today the smartphone is ubiquitous in much of the world.

i am fairly certain every person in this room has at least one smartphone on them right now. is already device changing how we use infrastructure. driving a stone real-time traffic information. we purchase of rail ticket on our smartphone and pay for parking and some in the taxi on the fly. we can a cop was all these things before but the sheer ease is upsetting established markets. ask anyone in the taxi business. smartphone puts the world in your hand. in those spirits of time which were always inefficient, we now have time to be efficient whether we are waiting for an elevator or riding the metro. we can use those bits of time in new ways. transithe benefits of has always been the chance to do

something productive with that time spent commuting. the quality of that time has always been low. smartphone has changed how people use this time. that it is one factor behind the trend of driving toward transit. total vehicle-- miles traveled in the united states peaked in 2007. that was the year known for introductione, the of the iphone. you be the judge. transit is not yet a viable choice for many americans. let's fast-forward to that horizon. we were on the cusp of opening up roads to autonomous vehicles. this technology could take the most unproductive hour of the day and hour commute, and make it an hour to read e-mail, watch

a movie, go shopping all on your smart phone. i think you will agree that society will have a tough time saying no to that. technology is not the only thing changing. so our attitudes. we have all heard the evidence -- fewer young people are getting drivers licenses, cities are cool again, transit use keeps growing. this wave has been building for years and shows no sign of slowing down. these changes are happening overseas as well. in germany, one half of the men under 25 used on a car and now it's less than 1/3. rates of people driving in their 20's have fallen all over the world and car sharing is bigger in europe that it is in the u.s. way are the so-called millennial's. by what major force people call the sharing economy. it is everything from zip car to

air b&b and bike share. these turn underutilized assets from a spare bedroom to a riderless bike into market -- marketable commodities. here is where changing technology and changing attitudes may converge. what major capital investment sits unused 90% of the time? the car, of course. it's not hard to imagine a transportation future that looks rather different than today. , ing an app on my iphone summon on autonomous vehicle to take me to my next meeting. it might be my car or it might be someone else's but it happens to be close by. once it drops me off, it parks itself or maybe picks up another passenger. this may be 15 years off but i bet the people at uber are already thinking about it. the consequences for our industry are not yet clear.

when everyone has their own , would people moved further from the city or will people deemphasize car ownership in favor of an on-demand model? will this lead to other lifestyle choices that go with lower rates of car ownership like living in denser, walkable neighborhoods? if so, the infrastructure we invest in will need to change. that, to get to important to recognize that many things will not change. our existing stock of infrastructure will always need to be maintained. from interstate highways to water systems to the power grid, to communication links -- we have fallen behind on this score and technology is not going to save us. to my knowledge, there is no app out there to fix a bridge. the new infrastructure we built

in the 21st century may look different from what we built in the 20th century. the next wave of investments will focus on supporting a denser and more urban pattern of living. not so many new highways and more public transport, fewer single-family homes for vertical construction, water and power infrastructure. sustainability will be a nonnegotiable objective no matter what we build, it will have to handle a world of higher sea levels and more powerful storms. it's interesting, other countries look at our decentralized system of infrastructure planning and wonder how can it ever work? it has its challenges but it also has its strengths. we heard some of that this morning. different places can try different things. each city is its own little petri dish of experimentation.

as one place experiments, the other places look and learn. as an example, we never adopted a national policy on light rail. a few cities tried it and other cities liked what they saw. bike sharing work in washington, d.c. and other cities are following suit. earlier, howabout do we finance and deliver infrastructure for the future? innovative things are happening and we're encouraged by what congressman delaney had to say but they're mostly happening someplace else. generation ago, there was not a big yap and how infrastructure was financed, built, and operated in the u.s. versus other industrialized nations. the government collected taxes and allocated funding. private firms bid and designed and built the next project on the government was the operator. it was pretty standard.

in the u.s., this is still mostly how it is done. except, we are doing fewer projects every year. i will editorialize for a moment -- all levelsxisted at of government in terms of consensus does no longer exist in both parties. to support a reasonable level of infrastructure, investment has broken down without anything to replace it. these consequences are serious. i know everybody here understands that and they are getting worse every year. i'm not going to belabor the point. you have heard all too many times before. financing infrastructure with taxes has been on the decline in other countries. they have been willing to build a new financing system in its place. we have yet to adopt that. from tolls or fares or rates is increasingly seen as acceptable but also preferable from mexico to china to europe to australia. most new high-speed roadways are

built as toll roads print it is the new normal. user financing has the advantages and it goes beyond just raising money. it helps allocate resources in a rational way. if a project serves a real demand, the market will fund it. if, however, the market is not interested, maybe that tells us something about the project. look at the decline or retrenchment in the construction of greenfield toll rose recently. we all hate congestion. that is different from how much we are willing to pay to avoid it. user financing should be encouraged but it is not a panacea. well-suited to the task of restoring and maintaining the infrastructure we already have. this red and brother worked cost many tens of millions annually and cannot realistically be financed with tolls.

broad-based funding like we have with the gas tax is and always will be a necessity. it remains the big wrench in our toolbox. whether we are talking about building new facilities or repairing old ones, new methods of project delivery can make a big difference. unfortunately, we still lag behind in this country. the dominant practice here is ld.t we call design, bid, buil we talked earlier about silos. the us is a case where the traditional methods in this country are very much silo driven. what is happening is a move toward design/build that started 10 years ago where you marry a contractor and designer to develop a project in concert. you will limit some of that frictional cost and effort and time that occurs in developing

it in silos. that improve schedule, cost, and that can improve the risk side of it. anotheresign/build, approach is around public-private partnerships. we have heard a bit about that. one team can possibly do everything from raising the financing to planning and designing it and getting it permanent and building and operating for a. of time. the government's role in this case is to set standards for performance and pays over time as people use the facility. ,et's be honest, some agencies some governments throughout the country are still skeptical of these new practices. they are afraid to give up control. i believe this there is not warranted. it is true that these methods call upon government to exercise control. but in a new way. ther the old system from

project sponsor can dictate every design choice however small. it's very hands-on and can add time to the delivery process. with new methods, the project sponsor still retains control but that control is expressed through performance standards with the private sector left to figure out the details. this allows government to focus its energy on true matters of public policy, setting objectives, establishing a budget, demanding performance, and enforcing rules that get the most out of the competitive marketplace. made,hese decisions are the delivery process becomes less inherently governmental and more amenable to efficiency driven by the private sector. i firmly believe that our public agencies could adopt a contracting practice that we have seen as commonplace overseas from london to

australia and elsewhere, we could get more infrastructure built for our money. home. -- here at home. let me conclude with a couple of thoughts -- by themselves, these reforms will not solve our infrastructure deficit. but if they can get us more bang for the buck, perhaps this can lead to greater public confidence that every dollar we invest will return the benefit expected and be managed with the utmost care. element ande a key convincing our elected leaders at whatever level of government that infrastructure spending is vital and it needs to be paid for by all of us. ways our society will change in the future, and the challenges we see in building infrastructure, that is vital to

keep us growing and thriving as a country. the time to act is now. thank you. [applause] >> that's great, thank you very much. a lot of themes you may not expect to hear from a large engineering firm. thank you very much for reinforcing that. before i close, i want to say a quick thank you to the team at rockingham to do that awful lot of work on the that -- to the team at brookings who did an awful lot of work. thank you all for coming out here today on a rainy friday. i thought this was the conversation we wanted to get into and we just started to scratch the surface. one more comment -- we

highlighted a bunch of projects here today, things that were specific with the panel. we did all throughout the week and i think we will keep doing this. this is what we will spend a lot of time as we travel around the country, as we talk to political leaders across the country, this is the stuff we have been looking for. they want to know who is doing what. tell me what the innovations are out there. what can we learn? give me specifics on how things got done, the cause no one is waiting anymore for the silver bullet for things to happen. you heard from folks here today. this is the time to get the stone, and we are seeing that -- from folks around the country. we will solicit more of these