#BuildForTomorrow: Because Life Won’t Wait
Whether it’s the highway we take to work or the road we travel on to the grocery store, we depend on reliable infrastructure every day. Our roads, highways and bridges help get us where we need to go safely and on time. A well-maintained infrastructure network is also critical for the delivery of goods to and from local businesses. After years of neglect and a lack of proper funding, much of our infrastructure is now outdated and in poor condition. The time to invest in modernizing our highway and transit systems is long overdue.
That’s why Trucking Moves America Forward (TMAF) is proud to join with a coalition of more than 500 transportation and infrastructure organizations and companies in support of Infrastructure Week and its message #BuildForTomorrow.
Trucking professionals travel to every corner of America to deliver the goods we rely on, including the gas in our car, food in our fridge, supplies in our office and medicine in our cabinet. In total, professional truck drivers travel a collective 462 billion in the U.S. each year.
More than 80 percent of American communities rely solely on trucking for the delivery of their goods. One of the 3.5 million professional truck drivers on our nation’s roads makes these deliveries possible for you and your family. But faulty infrastructure threatens to slow down the trucking industry and all of America.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), one of every five miles on our highways is in poor condition. More than one in eight bridges are considered functionally obsolete, which means that they can’t serve the current truck and motorist traffic demand. Congestion and traffic, which result from poor and inadequate infrastructure, are also problems.
Inadequate infrastructure leads to more congestion and traffic on our roads, which threatens to slow our deliveries and economy down. But when it impacts our personal lives and we are slowed down, or even prevented from getting to an important life event, traffic is much more than an inconvenience. That’s because life doesn’t wait. Important life events take place with or without us.
With Americans losing $160 billion in wasted time and fuel each year including the average commuter wasting 42 hours a year in traffic at an average cost of $1,600 annually, it’s time we saw action from our lawmakers.
Our leaders must address the nation’s infrastructure gap and #BuildforTomorrow. Our lives, businesses and economy depend on a strong network of roads, highways and bridges. A long-term and well-funded transit and highway bill is critical to the success of our country today and in the future.
