The Impact Of The Infrastructure Investment And Jobs Act By The Numbers

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed into law on November 15th, 2021, has 65 percent public support, and it's clear to see why when the law is looked at by the numbers in terms of its impact, not just as funding information on a fact sheet.

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will provide clean drinking water to nearly three million Americans, including 100,000 care centers (schools, daycares, old age and disability homes, etc.) across the country.

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will secure access to broadband for more than 18 million Americans, ending a serious issue that was brought to the forefront of infrastructure discussions as people began working and going to school at home.

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will repair nearly every bridge in the United States, 43,000 bridges out of the 45,000 or so in a state of disrepair, with the largest dedicated bridge funding in U.S. history.

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will repair more than 43,000 miles of highways and major roads, enough to drive from Los Angeles, California, to Portland, Maine, and then back, not just once, but six times.

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes funding for 24,000 buses, not including the no less than 7,500 electric buses the law provides for, with a special emphasis on expanding access to communities with inadequate public transit systems. IIJA also funds 5,000 rail cars and 200 bus and rail car stations.

     Speaking of rail, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will build, repair, or upgrade 70,000 miles of rail, or the equivalent of half of all existing rail in the United States.

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act also includes the necessary funding to repair every public airport in the United States: all 5,000 of them.

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act sets aside $21 billion for environmental remediation, which is enough to clean up 250 Superfund sites and 35,000 brownfield sites and cap 20,000 oil and gas wells. 

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act invests $17 billion in ports, not including the funds that will be provided to put on the water no less than 30 electric ferries. 

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will repair and replace approximately 15,000 miles of transmission lines in America's energy grid.

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will deploy 500,000 EV charging stations across the nation, enough to charge 10 million electric vehicles on a regular basis by 2030.

     The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act makes historic investments in Appalachia, with more than $1 billion being given to fund the Appalachian Regional Commission over five years, double its base funding and, when combined with this baseline funding, enough to lift 17 Appalachian counties out of extreme poverty.

     40 percent of all clean energy benefits will go toward disadvantaged communities, especially communities of color, which represents an increased investment of at least $35 billion, or the average lifetime earnings of 15,000 people.

     This is just the beginning: the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes funding to invest in climate resilience, strengthen cybersecurity, reconnect communities segregated by racist policies, and save tens of thousands of lives from traffic deaths.

     All this requires the blood, sweat, and tears, of citizens extraordinary in how ordinary their stories are, the threads that form the fabric of America. As our economy nears full recovery from the COVID pandemic, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act gets the United States off on the right economic foot by creating 2 million permanent jobs.