HNTB’s Paul Yarossi highlights need for long-term U.S. infrastructure investment in national radio interview

Paul Yarossi, president of HNTB Holdings Ltd, recently discussed U.S. infrastructure funding on “The Morning Briefing with Tim Farley,” a national non-partisan radio program. The interview can be heard here.

The current surface transportation authorization, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, expires May 31, 2015. With regard to a long-term funding bill being passed by Congress this year, Yarossi said there is positive momentum in Washington, D.C. He asked Farley’s listeners to “urge their congressional representatives to take advantage of this momentum to get a surface transportation bill passed.”

In the interview with Farley, Yarossi expressed concern over the declining purchasing power of the gas tax, which has not been raised since 1993, saying funding is the biggest problem U.S. infrastructure faces. He shared his support for a gas-tax increase that will help add meaningful jobs to our economy. “A penny of the user-fee gas tax creates more than 14,000 jobs in the construction industry alone. These are good jobs. These are jobs with upward mobility, where an unskilled laborer can walk onto a job and work and learn and take training courses and walk off as an equipment operator. It’s a step into the middle class.”  This echoes what Yarossi recently wrote in a Viewpoint titled “Getting America Moving.”

HNTB Corporation is an employee-owned infrastructure firm serving public and private owners and contractors. With more than a century of service in the United States, HNTB understands the life cycle of infrastructure and addresses clients’ most complex technical, financial and operational challenges. Professionals nationwide deliver a full range of infrastructure-related services, including award-winning planning, design, program management and construction management. For more information, visit www.hntb.com.