Tyler Cowen linked the other day to this Leonhardt piece on infrastructure from 2008.

Some of the highlights or lowlights, if you will, from the article:

A lack of adequate financing is part of the problem, without doubt. But the bigger problem has been an utter lack of seriousness in deciding how that money gets spent....

...Government agencies usually don’t even have to do a rigorous analysis of a project or how it would affect traffic and the environment, relative to its cost and to the alternatives — before deciding whether to proceed. In one recent survey of local officials, almost 80 percent said they had based their decisions largely on politics, while fewer than 20 percent cited a project’s potential benefits....

...They help explain why our infrastructure is in such poor shape even though spending on it, surprisingly enough, has risen at a good clip in recent decades. Spending is up 50 percent over the last 10 years, after adjusting for inflation. As a share of the economy, it will be higher this year than in any year since 1981....
(emphasis added)

All-in-all, a good read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/business/economy/19leonhar...

Best,
Ryan