The world woke up Tuesday morning to find civil engineers dominating the news cycle. The topic topping everyone’s feeds? Infrastructure.
ASCE released its 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure March 25 with a Solutions Summit event in Washington, D.C. The cumulative grade point average for America’s infrastructure was a C, the highest mark since ASCE started releasing report cards in 1998.
And the news traveled fast.
New York Times. CNN. CBS News. Associated Press. Politico.
Each published prominent content pieces early Tuesday morning, highlighting the infrastructure report card for a mass audience.
“I think it's so important,” said Darren Olson, chair of the Committee on America’s Infrastructure, which develops the report card. “The message that we have resonates with everybody. It resonates with our elected officials, it resonates with business owners, it resonates with American families. When we invest in infrastructure, it helps all of us.
“And to see that message go out across such large platforms, it’s so rewarding, knowing what that kind of communication will do.”
ASCE publishes the report every four years, assigning grades to U.S. infrastructure overall and 18 individual infrastructure sectors. The 2021 report card graded America’s infrastructure with a C-.
“We have seen the difference investment can make in improving infrastructure,” said 2025 President Feniosky A. Peña-Mora. “And while this grade showcases that investment leads to direct results, the job is not yet done. As the report card makes clear, there is still a great need for sustained investments. Delaying upgrades to our nation’s roads, bridges, transit, and utilities will cost families and businesses time and money, in addition to creating unsafe yet often avoidable situations.”
Of course, driving the conversation around infrastructure investment is an essential first step, but it is only the first step.
Finding solutions that will improve upon America’s infrastructure C grade is the continued mission of the ASCE advocacy efforts – hence Tuesday’s Solutions Summit.
The summit convened leaders from around the infrastructure space – civil engineers, elected officials, executives, and financial advisers, among others. The panel discussions and talks ranged from future innovations to specific sector needs.
“Public works stuff tends to be very bipartisan,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, at the Solutions Summit.
“And (Committee Chair) Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and I are discussing how to make progress with both water and highway bills that we have coming up to expand on the progress that your report card has indicated. I’m eager to do that. We clearly need more investment in infrastructure. You kind of can’t go wrong with that. And to do it in a bipartisan fashion is the right way to go.”
The summit looked more deeply into some of the challenges that must be addressed to improve infrastructure. Rep. Sam Graves (Missouri), chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, spoke at the summit and pointed at the need to eliminate red tape.
“Permit reform – we absolutely have to have it,” Graves said. “And the appetite is there in both the House and the Senate, on both sides of the aisle. One of the things we’re seeing with the IIJA (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) is it’s taking forever to move a lot of that money that is sitting out there for a lot of these projects. … There’s going to be a huge permitting reform push to streamline those projects.”
Ultimately, ASCE’s overarching advocating concern is sustained investment. The report card and last year’s ASCE Bridging the Gap study finds a $3.7 trillion investment gap for America’s infrastructure if current funding levels continue.
“It’s important to continue to invest because that investment actually brings prosperity to the United States,” Peña-Mora said. “It brings manufacturing, it brings jobs back home. It supports our safety and security.
“And that investment supports our communities.”
