A job can't be done without the correct tools.
That's the message from the travel community to President Donald Trump as the nation's leader prepares to unveil his long-awaited transportation infrastructure proposal.
The very people who count most on this infrastructure-those who plan and provide travel as well as those in the shipping community-cannot continue to grow as the atmosphere around them crumbles.
"America was once the global leader of transportation and infrastructure innovation," said U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Roger Dow, "from the development of the Interstate Highway System to the first commercial flight."
"Modern, efficient travel infrastructure-including our roads, rails, highways, and airports-improves quality of life, the economy and national security. Outdated, inefficient and deteriorating infrastructure is a drag on our economy and way of life, and that's what U.S. travelers have dealt with over several decades."
Travel is an integral part of the U.S. economy, but the infrastructure that supports it has been left largely untouched-with zero innovation since big, wide-ranging evolutions like the New Deal of the 1930s and the Federal Highway Act of 1956.
"Ensuring our transportation systems can get people safely and efficiently from Point A to Point B is critical to the long-term health of the travel industry," said Eben Peck, Executive Vice President of Advocacy for the American Society of Travel Agents.
"ASTA looks forward to working with the U.S. Travel Association and other industry groups to push for sorely-needed federal action to modernize America's transportation infrastructure."
Politically, infrastructure has been a nonstarter for a long time. Though funding packages have been proposed and partially adopted as part of overall omnibus funding bills in every administration, it has remained something often overpromised and under-delivered from both sides of the political aisle.
President Trump could be the first president to truly change that.
It is notable that the 2016 Republican platform didn't include concrete language on infrastructure investment. Then-Candidate Trump had plenty of criticism towards current infrastructure-notably calling U.S. airports Third World Countries in his first presidential debate-but his critiques lacked concrete, forward-thinking action.
Yet, although infrastructure may have long been a political longshot, it's almost bulletproof from a support perspective. For any related topic-highways, bridges, airports, ports, disaster relief, etc-public polling shows that the vast majority of Americans of all political stripes support more spending.
Where the issue typically lies, however, is when and where this spending takes place.
Yet, the issue could be solved with a plan big enough to make everyone happy.
"It's time for the U.S. to think big again when it comes to transportation," said Dow. "We applaud President Trump for making significant upgrades in the nation's infrastructure a top policy objective, providing an unprecedented opportunity to make meaningful improvements to how people travel to and within our country."
"We hope the administration and Congress will draw guidance from these principles as a means to capture the maximum economic benefit from efforts to fix our country's infrastructure."
The U.S. Travel Association laid out its top objectives for infrastructure development as well as policy recommendations. This includes prioritizing investments that help people and businesses move throughout the country-especially in high-trafficked areas-as well as finding new and inventive ways to fund infrastructure along with new technologies to make ongoing development more sustainable.
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