President Barack Obama fleshed out plans Feb. 20 to invest in public transportation and repair the nation’s aging infrastructure, building on a theme he announced during the State of the Union address on Feb. 12.

These plans expand on three major themes and propose initiatives that capitalize on private investment to help start projects.

“Investing in infrastructure not only makes our roads, bridges, and ports safer and allows our businesses and workers to be as competitive as they need to be in the global economy,” Obama said in a prepared statement released by the White House, “it also creates thousands of good American jobs that cannot be outsourced.”

The primary components of Obama’s plan include:

* Investing in a “fix-it-first” policy. The plan would immediately invest $50 billion in the nation’s transportation infrastructure, with $40 billion targeted to upgrades and focused on fixing public transportation systems, highways, bridges, and airports most in need of repair.

* Attracting private investment through a “Rebuild America Partnership.” The president’s plan would partner federal, state, and local governments with businesses and private capital to provide transportation, electric, water, and communications networks. This proposed investment partnership has three components:

   * A National Infrastructure Bank to leverage private and public capital to support infrastructure projects of “national and regional significance,” invest in a broad range of infrastructure projects, and operate as an independent, wholly owned government entity;

   * America Fast Forward Bonds program, which would broaden the Build America Bonds program from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) to attract new sources of capital for infrastructure investment—including from some public pension funds and foreign investors—among other features; and

   * An expanded Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program, which provides direct loans, loan guarantees, and lines of credit to regionally or nationally significant transportation projects, was expanded in the recent MAP-21 authorization. The Obama administration said the increase “highlights the important role that infrastructure financing can play in catalyzing private investment, and its expansion was a significant step towards more innovative infrastructure financing.”

* Cutting red tape. This part of Obama’s plan would eliminate red tape in permits and review for infrastructure projects and speed up plans for surface transportation projects, among others.

The White House statement also summarized several of its recent transportation-related initiatives under ARRA and existing programs: “Over the last four years, the Department of Transportation has built or improved more than 6,000 miles of rail, 40 rail stations, and purchased 260 passenger rail cars and 105 locomotives.” It also noted that the administration has invested in more than 350 miles of new rail and bus rapid transit, 45,621 buses, and 5,545 railcars.

The full statement is available here.