Despite a mountain of money from last year's Recovery Act, many projects cannot happen. Private debt markets have shrunk because of the economic recession. Insurance companies have all but disappeared as investors, partly because of AIG's role in the financial industry crisis. Credit ratings agencies have toughened their standards, making bonds harder to issue.

Cities and states are broke anyway. The Texas Department of Transportation, for example, barely receives enough in gasoline tax revenues to pay for maintenance of existing roads, never mind new projects.

This pushes the nation to the verge of a new era of private investment for public projects, argues former Mayor Henry Cisneros in the preface to a new book, “The Handbook of Infrastructure Investing,” edited by Michael Underhill (Wiley, $95).

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The Texas Department of Transportation, lacking the sort of big cash it takes to eliminate stoplights on Texas 71 by building overpasses, will turn the thoroughfare into a "superstreet" just east of the Austin airport.

The counterintuitive changes — drivers wishing to turn left from FM 973 onto Texas 71 would instead turn right and then make a U-turn about 300 yards down the road — will actually allow many more cars to pass through the area, officials said Tuesday. The work is scheduled to be completed by 2012 .