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"Our remaining employees have made sacrifices in pay and benefits to enable us to stay profitable, and plans for several new store locations were canceled," Holt says. According to Holt, the economic crisis and uncertainty surrounding the highway bill are also taking a massive toll on local contractors. "Our customers who do highway construction have laid off thousands of employees. Many contractors are still reducing their workforces and their equipment fleets. The rapid drop in value of used equipment has also had a drastic affect on the equity of most contractors, resulting in a reduction of both borrowing and bonding capacity," he says.
Other speakers at the rally included Texas State Senator Jeff Wentworth (R-District 25); Dean Word, III of Dean Word Company (New Braunfels); and Craig Paylor, president of JLG Industries, a manufacturer of mobile aerial work platforms based in Maryland. They pointed to the broad social and economic consequences of infrastructure investment, or rather Congress' failure to invest enough.
According to the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), traffic congestion costs the country $87 billion per year in wasted time and fuel. TTI reports that, on average, San Antonio commuters waste 27 gallons of fuel and 38 hours per year sitting in traffic. A study last year by the Transportation Construction Coalition found that road conditions are a contributing factor in more than half -- 52.7% -- of the nearly 42,000 American deaths resulting from motor vehicle crashes each year. Accidents in which road conditions were a factor cost Texas more than $13 billion in 2006.
More information about highway reauthorization and the AED-AEM campaign is available at www.startusupusa.com.
