Infrastructure investment and spending in the United States as well as the state of its roads, bridges and more has been a perennial topic for more than a decade, but without the results many have hoped for. On Tuesday, Jan. 30, in his State of the Union address, President Trump outlined plans for an infrastructure program to address many of these problems by using private capital and streamlining the regulatory process. But the outline is just that, an outline, and now the plan will move on to the Congress, where legislators will see if they can work out a bill that satisfies the various interests.

The core of President Trump’s proposal is the aforementioned regulatory streamlining and a $1.5 trillion plan to engage federal, state and local governments and private capital. The proposal includes a rural infrastructure plan to encourage freight movement and to improve transportation, as well as a “transformative projects” plan that offers federal funding and technical as