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Ready or not, decision time is upon us. Many of these highways were built to last between 40 and 50 years - they'll soon need to be either repaired or reinvented. "What's going to happen in the next 10 years when we need to make a big investment to prevent them from collapsing like the one in Minneapolis?" asks John Renne, professor of urban studies at the University of New Orleans.

Federal-aid Simplified. Understanding the Essentials. More and more, transportation agencies must pursue better, faster and smarter ways of doing business. Federal-aid Essentials offers a central online library of informational videos and resources, designed specifically for local public agencies. Each video addresses a single topic-condensing the complex regulations and requirements of the Federal-aid Highway Program into easy-to-understand concepts and illustrated examples.

With his very honest, stark, and poignant perspective, Chuck deconstructed our nation's infrastructure maintenance deficiencies and compared our current pattern of development to a bonafide Ponzi scheme. For example, California needs an additional $37 billion per year just to maintain our existing highway system. Like experiencing Springsteen's "Nebraska" or Boston's City Hall for the first time, Chuck's message weighed heavily on the audience as he painted a bleak picture for our economic, social and cultural landscape.

Our national transportation policy has barely changed since the 1950s, when gas was 20 cents a gallon and President Eisenhower launched the interstate highway system. Today, we live in a very different world. The interstates have been built. Americans are paying record prices at the pump and feeling stuck with costly commutes and congestion. Bridges are crumbling. As our population becomes ever more urban, more are breathing dirty air. Our climate is threatened. Too many older, younger and rural Americans are stranded. Volatile areas of the world literally have us over a barrel - millions of barrels a day, in fact.