America's infrastructure is the backbone of our society. From roads, rails, bridges, and transit to the electrical grid, water treatment plants, broadband networks, schools, and hospitals, infrastructure makes modern life as we know it possible. It is critical to our economic growth, global competitiveness, and quality of life.

Despite its importance, America's infrastructure has not kept pace with our country's growing and shifting demands and the changing world around us. A growing pattern of underinvestment and uncoordinated planning has led to a range of concerns that are felt across the country, including widespread congestion, unsafe bridges, inadequate water supply, and an electric grid that is increasingly pressed beyond its ability. More broadly, we have created a system that leaves us dependent on imported oil, vulnerable to rising energy prices, and ill-equipped to address the challenges of climate change.

To ensure our nation's ability to compete in an evolving global economy and respond to crucial energy and environmental challenges, we must not only maintain our infrastructure system but also enhance and improve it. And, we must do so in a way that is transparent and accountable to the American people.

Accomplishing all of this requires both new investments and a new long-term vision for the 21st century. My yearlong NGA Chair's initiative—Strengthening Our Infrastructure for a Sustainable Future—enlists the efforts of all governors to rebuild, repair, and extend our nation's infrastructure to ensure America's continued economic competitiveness as well as its environmental sustainability. Helping to lead this effort is a task force of governors who have confronted infrastructure challenges in their own states and have seen what can work.

States have a key role to play in reinventing the policies and programs that will help address our nation's infrastructure challenges. Indeed, states have repeatedly been at the forefront of overcoming these challenges. We must act now to build on our successes while exploring new opportunities.

hile the federal government must and will be an important partner, strengthening our infrastructure in a way that is both economically and environmentally sustainable calls for states to move forward on a number of fronts. Strengthening Our Infrastructure for a Sustainable Future will help governors identify and advance actions that embrace:

• Innovative ways to pay for infrastructure;


• New approaches that help identify the most costeffective investments and ensure top performance and accountability;


• Enhanced coordination across government agencies and levels of government, as well as between states and regions;


• Measures that reduce or manage demand and avoid costly new capacity projects;


• More sustainable alternatives to conventional infrastructure, such as transit and intercity rail, renewable energy and energy efficiency, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles; and,


• Advanced technologies that can reduce costs and improve performance.

An Infrastructure Vision for the 21st Century looks at how different infrastructure assets affect states' ability to compete globally; examines the infrastructure challenges facing states and our country as a whole; and explores new ways, both public and private, to finance our infrastructure needs. Above all, it offers a framework for transforming not only our nation's physical infrastructure, but also the very way infrastructure investment decisions and policies are planned, financed, and carried out over the long-term.

A robust, well-maintained national infrastructure is essential to sustaining—and growing—America's economic vitality, environmental health, and quality of life. States that successfully formulate a new, sustainable infrastructure vision for America in the 21st century—and bring it to scale—will be helping to improve the daily lives of all Americans and revitalize the nation for years to come.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell
NGA Chair, 2008–2009