With the United States' overdue infrastructure tab approaching $2.3 trillion, or more, over the next decade to modernize the country's aging transportation, energy, and water infrastructure, Nettler spoke about the reasons he perceives such issues are not getting addressed and fail to get the attention they deserve:
"one challenge is that, with infrastructure, is that itʼs unseen. Itʼs something that, until thereʼs a real crisis...people assume that the people that theyʼve elected and the people theyʼre paying their taxes to are handling these problems. I think the other issue is that, certainly today, itʼs incredibly difficult to marshal the resources to tackle these issues and to get the political will behind spending money."
And on the ways in which localities are working to address their infrastructure challenges:
"what cities across the country are realizing -- you see this in Los Angeles with the "Measure R" funding, which is entirely locally funding for transit improvements; you see this recently in Chicago just last week with Mayor Emmanuelʼs announcement -- is that cities and localities are realizing that to tackle these urgent issues, theyʼre going to have to take matters into their own hands and really move beyond reliance on leadership and funding from the federal level because things just arenʼt getting done and these problems continue to get worse."
