As TEN points out in their release, infrastructure investment continues to present an untapped opportunity for job creation — if Washington chooses to act. And with women and minorities among the hardest hit by the economic downturn, states ought to do what they can to broaden opportunity.

On-the-job-training and apprenticeship programs in highway construction are an indispensable tool for state departments of transportation because they prepare workers for careers as opposed to just short-term jobs. And, as TEN’s research demonstrates, some states are already seeing results.

The good news: four states — Illinois, Indiana, Connecticut and Minnesota successfully upped the percentage of both women and minorities in training programs between 2008 and 2010. Minnesota and Illinois, along with Missouri and Michigan, have seen the greatest improvement, due in part to active organizing by TEN coalition members in-state. In Maine, 75 percent of participants in apprenticeship or on-the-job training programs were women, along with 55 of North Dakotans, both impressive results.

The bad news: more often than not, states are failing to take advantage of these programs and not showing initiative in increasing opportunity for those hurting the most. And, while a six-month extension of the current transportation law was a welcome reprieve for states, it is far from clear what can pass Congress in March. As a package, President Obama’s American Jobs Act may not be moving, but might the infrastructure component survive?

You can find out more about the report, titled “The Road to Good Jobs: Making Training Work,” or read it in its entirety at TEN’s website. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on a TEN event in St. Louis yesterday.

From 2004-2008, states spent 57 percent of available highway dollars to add a little over 1 percent to our already vast highway network, and only 43 percent to maintain the other 99 percent of highway lanes.

Keeping our existing highway network in “good” condition would require spending $43 billion a year over the next 20 years, well over the total, combined amount spent today on new construction and preservation.

Those are two of the findings in a report out today from Smart Growth America and Taxpayers for Common Sense, Repair Priorities: Transportation spending strategies to save taxpayer dollars and improve roads. The report examines road conditions and spending priorities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and found that, as a result of their spending decisions, road conditions in many states are getting worse and costs for taxpayers are going up.

The short version: We’ve spent 60 years building highways, the bill for their maintenance is coming due – and it’s a doozy! Left to their own volition, the states are not doing the job. As Grace Crunican, the former DOT head for Oregon, said during the media telebriefing on the report, “There’s a lot of political pressure to put money into new projects. … We’ve got to find the discipline” to keep our roads properly maintained, she said.

It’s time for Washington to fix it. States have to be held to high standards, and the money they receive should be tied to accountability on that score. The share of money that is walled off for maintenance and that can’t be siphoned off for “sexy” – Crunican’s word – pet political projects has to be much larger than it is now.

Congress is currently in the process of drafting a new transportation bill, and lawmakers need to keep a laser-like focus on the repair and rehabilitation of American’s existing roads and bridges. We cannot build a 21st century transportation system until we take care of what we built in the 20th.

You can find more information about this new SGA and Taxpayers’ report, including a state-by-state map, here.

Smart Growth America contributed to this post.

The report, Measuring Transportation Investments: The Road to Results, is quick to tie the timing of its findings to the current debate over including more performance measures in a reauthorization of the nation’s surface transportation law. An unofficial version of the Obama administration bill makes performance and accountability a key component of the federal program.

The report ranked the 50 states and the District of Columbia according to six key goals: safety, jobs and commerce, mobility, access, environmental stewardship and infrastructure preservation. According to the report:

Just 13 states — California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington — have goals, performance measures and data to help decision makers prioritize transportation spending. Nineteen states trail behind, lacking a full array of tools needed to account for the return on investment in their roads, highways, bridges and bus and rail systems. The remaining 18 states and Washington, DC, fall someplace in between, with mixed results

Voters are making it known that they want concrete benchmarks and clear results for their tax dollars when it comes to infrastructure. “The American public expects leaders to manage our transportation investment with an eye toward performance and results,” said Nicholas Turner, Rockefeller Foundation managing director, pointing to recent Rockefeller Foundation Infrastructure Survey results showing that 90 percent favor strengthening policies that hold government accountable for collecting data and certifying that projects are delivered on time and on-budget.

At Streetsblog Capitol Hill, Tanya Snyder noted that the state transportation agencies with the most effective means of tracking public dollars often enjoy greater public backing.

The collection of solid data and the ability to use that data to justify the benefit of transportation expenditures helps the public gain confidence in state transportation agencies. In Washington, once the state started scoring projects based on a cost-benefit analysis, the legislature was persuaded to sell bond issues and increase the gas tax to bring in more revenue. Georgia has begun assessing potential projects in terms of their ability to improve mobility and create economic development. Oregon measures the number and rate of crashes in which large trucks were at fault, using this information to increase safety precautions.

Snyder also highlighted the sections of the report touting merit-based grant programs like TIGER, which would be built upon if Congress adopts the administration’s proposed Transportation Leadership Awards.

The report, “Recent Lessons from the Stimulus: Transportation Funding and Job Creation”, analyzes whether states made the best use of transportation dollars in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The analysis comes two years after passage of the Recovery Act doled out $26.6 billion in flexible transportation funds to the states.

The findings are pretty simple to summarize:

According to data sent by the states to Congress, the states that created the most jobs invested in public transportation and projects that maintained and repaired existing roads and bridges. The states that ranked poorly predominantly spent their funds building new roads and bridges.

Historically, investments in public transportation have generated 31 percent more jobs per dollar than new construction of roads and bridges. However, SGA’s findings show that the payoff was even larger in Recovery Act spending, with public transportation projects producing 70 percent more jobs per dollar than road projects.

Newsweek’s David A. Graham covered the report’s release yesterday and noted:

Today the unemployment rate is hovering above 9 percent — better than it would have been without the stimulus, most experts agree, but still painfully high. Why didn’t we get more for our money?

While liberals and conservatives alike blame the stimulus itself — It wasn’t big enough! It was never going to work! — the problem may have more to do with how the money was spent. It’s not enough just to inject money into infrastructure, because not all transportation funding is created equal — or at least, it doesn’t create jobs at an equal rate. As any infrastructure policy wonk can tell you, money spent on fixing up existing systems or building mass transit delivers more jobs, and faster, than building new highways.

SGA also released findings from a November poll (pdf) that found that 91 percent of voters feel maintaining and repairing our roads and bridges should be the top or a high priority for state spending on transportation programs, and 68 percent believe that improving and expanding public transportation options should be the top or a high priority.

According to the report’s state-by-state rankings, seven states and the District of Columbia spent 100 percent of their Recovery Act flexible transportation funds to preserve existing roads and bridges, and ranked among the top states. The states included: Vermont, Maine, New Jersey, South Dakota, Connecticut, Rhode Island and North Dakota. Among other findings:

• Texas, Kentucky, Florida, Kansas and Arkansas spent the majority of funds building new roads and bridges and comprised the bottom five in terms of average jobs created per dollar spent.
• Florida and Kansas can point to roads that are in good shape relative to other states and thus less need for repair and maintenance.

“SGA’s analysis aligns closely with what the American people say they want: fix what we have, provide an array of transportation options and make sure our streets are safe for everyone,” noted Transportation for America Director James Corless. “Congress ought to listen to the American people and embrace the kind of investments we need by passing a comprehensive transportation bill that prepares us for the 21st century. Absent action, we will lose needed jobs today and opportunity tomorrow.”

SGA has a more detailed write-up and full download of the report available here, and you can read Newsweek’s coverage here.

While many of details of the federal stimulus are still being hashed out, our analysis of these state project lists has made one thing quite clear — if we expect to create more jobs, protect our climate, and reduce our dependence on oil, our state and federal governments need to do a much better job of investing in green infrastructure projects that will help us rebuild and retool our economy.

Transportation for America partner and national advocacy organization U.S. PIRG has now released a new report, “Economic Stimulus or More Misguided Spending,” that takes an in-depth look at some of the project lists from the states, and finds some troubling trends:

Most stimulus project lists from state DOTs prioritize new highways while paying relatively little attention to repairing crumbling bridges and roads and even less emphasis on forward-looking transportation options, such as public transit and intercity rail. As a result, they are contrary to President-elect Obama’s stated intention to use smart spending to reduce America’s dependence on oil and emissions of global warming pollution.

U.S. PIRG and its state partners are pushing the report in key states across the country, and have already garnered attention in California, Connecticut, Arizona, and Florida.

With your help, we can push our state governments and federal lawmakers to match their words with actions by investing in a clean, green, 21st century economy. Check out the PIRG report and Transportation For America’s analysis to see how your state wants to spend its stimulus dollars, and be sure to sign our petition urging Congress to fix what’s broken before committing billions to expanding roads and highways.

As Congress works to craft an economic stimulus that can help get our economy out of a rut, will the spending just dig a bigger ditch?

The numbers for the proposed economic stimulus package keep increasing. Congress and the incoming administration both expect that tens of billions of dollars in the package will be targeted for transportation. Where does your state want to spend the money? We’re starting to get a picture, and at the moment, many of the answers don’t match what’s needed.

As part of developing the stimulus, states have been asked to develop lists of transportation projects that could be “ready to go” if funds were available. Transportation for America has gathered a handful of these lists from state departments of transportation, and the lists thus far suggest some real problems.

(Note: The lists we have received are not all complete, and some other projects may be funded directly by Governors or from other budgets. Refer to your state directly for the final word.)

Tables at the bottom of the post.

With commuters crowding into overburdened transit systems in record numbers and our elected leaders calling for investments in green, 21st Century transportation, we should prioritize investment in things like expanded public transportation, rail projects, and streets safe for walking and biking. Polls have shown that Americans favor those investments, and Americans voted for them again this November in huge numbers.

Consider also the fact that our current system has a tremendous backlog of repair and maintenance that has been neglected or underfunded for decades. With 12% of our nation’s bridges deemed “structurally deficient” in 2007, there’s a pressing need to repair our road and highway network we’ve spent the last 50 years building.

The lists we have, while perhaps incomplete, are not all headed in that direction. The state lists display a striking imbalance between these desperately needed repairs and brand new roads.

Florida’s list is 75% highway expansion and 10% maintenance and repair; Utah’s list is almost exclusively populated with highway expansion projects; Missouri’s list is two-thirds expansion; Kansas’ three-fourths.

It’s important to remember that highway expansion comes with the added cost burden of future maintenance and repair. Where will the money come from for those costs ten years from now? Because the recovery package will be a one-time infusion of cash, repair and maintenance of the existing network should be a top priority for these critical stimulus dollars.

Of the current state lists that do show public transportation or rail projects, the majority show 10 percent or less of stimulus spending in those areas.

This is not because road projects are “ready to go” and others are not. Local governments and public transportation agencies have identified scores of shovel-ready transit, sidewalk, and local road repair projects. The need for bridge maintenance and repair alone is about $17 billion annually for the next 50 years. The current lists would leave that repair backlog largely untouched.

Our state governments need to do a better job of identifying the best projects for the stimulus — and doing so with your input. Be sure to urge your state officials and representatives in Congress to release their list of projects, address their crumbling roads and overburdened public transportation systems, and help us craft the clean, green recovery our country needs to compete and thrive for decades to come.

Using the economic stimulus package to write blank checks to the states with zero accountability would be a poor use of precious national resources. If the states are given taxpayers’ federal money, we need to ensure there are measurable goals for what the money must accomplish.

Truthfully, the onus will be on Congress and President-elect Obama’s administration — not the states — to make sure the money in the package is allocated with some accountability.

Giving billions in stimulus funds to states without measurable goals for what constitutes success means there’s no guarantee that we’ll meet our pressing national goals for immediate job creation or our longer term goals for economic growth, reduced oil dependence and climate emissions, or greater access to the middle class for millions of working Americans.

NOTE: As we said, states have their lists in many different forms, so the tables below do not have consistent categories. Nor do we know where the lists are complete, and where they are not. Use these tables as a start, not an end; ask your state DOT and governor about the status of your state’s list, and urge a balance that if it is not evident. As we get in more state lists and more data, we’ll be analyzing the lists not just for what, but where: urban? Rural? Stay tuned.