RESTON, VA—As the Trump administration began stepping up its $1-trillion infrastructure push, the American Society of Civil Engineers on Thursday issued its latest report card on the nation's public works. The overall grade of D+ was unchanged from four years ago, although it represented a slight improvement from 2009.

The society began issuing its American Infrastructure Report Card every four years in 1998, as a follow-up to the Fragile Foundations report issued a decade earlier. “Among the problems identified within Fragile Foundations were increasing congestion and deferred maintenance and age of the system; the authors of the report worried that fiscal investment was inadequate to meet the current operations costs and future demands on the system,” according to the ASCE. “In each of ASCE's six Report Cards, the Society found that these same problems persist. Our nation's infrastructure is aging, underperforming, and in need of sustained care and action.”

The ASCE would consider an overall grade of B to be acceptable in the long term. In order to achieve that level of improvement, the society estimates that $4.6 trillion would need to be spent over the next 10 years, more than four times the expenditure the White House is proposing.

Alphabetically, the grades by category are as follows: aviation, D; bridges, C+; dams, D; drinking water, D; energy, D+; hazardous waste, D+; inland waterways, D; levees, D; ports, C+; public parks and recreation, D; rail, B, roads, D; schools, D+; solid waste, C+; transit, D-; and wastewater, D+. As one indicator of the subpar state of repair for the nation's roadways, the ASCE says that two of every five miles of Interstate highways are congested.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that President Trump is pushing his staff to put together a plan that would rely on streamlined local permitting for infrastructure projects, emphasize renovation of existing roadways over new construction and prioritize projects that could get underway quickly. “We're not going to give the money to states unless they can prove that they can be ready, willing and able to start the project,” Trump said at a private meeting with aides and executives Wednesday, according to the WSJ. “We don't want to give them money if they're all tied up for seven years with state bureaucracy.”

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