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Yesterday, President Obama announced a $50 billion infrastructure plan that calls for expanding and improving railways, roads and runways. The plan — which calls for constructing and maintaining 4,000 miles of rail — would build on infrastructure investments already being made through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Obama proposes to pair the plan with a long-term framework to renew and expand transportation infrastructure investment. Since the last long-term surface transportation bill expired at 2009’s end, investments have continued on a temporary basis.

The recently announced $50 billion program would jump-start job creation and front-load a “significant share of the new infrastructure resources,” according to a White House press release. The long-term surface transportation legislation framework calls for establishing an infrastructure bank to leverage federal dollars and focus on investments of “national and regional significance” that are most critical to economic progress, the Administration said.

The framework also should integrate high-speed rail on “equal footing” in the surface transportation program, the Administration added.

Building America’s Future, a coalition dedicated to investing in national transportation infrastructure, supports the Administration’s plan.

“A reformed, robust, transportation infrastructure program will speed needed repairs for our crumbling assets, eliminate time Americans waste in traffic and establish a true high-speed passenger-rail network,” said coalition co-chair and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell in a prepared statement.