I just watched a disturbing report on 60 Minutes focusing on the state of America's bridges. It painted a damning picture of federal neglect of both bridges and our interstate highways, with many structures over fifty years old and in desperate need of repair. I found the report particularly striking because it focused on two cities I have connections with: Pittsburgh, where I lived until a few months ago, and Philadelphia, where I currently reside.
My Gut Reaction: It's going to take a pile of body bags before anyone in Washington takes this problem seriously.
More below the fold:
Unfortunately, I think it will take a major disaster before politicians of both parties wake up and realize we need to fix this nation's infrastructure. We've come alarmingly close a few times already, as in the bridge collapse in Minneapolis that killed thirteen people and injured over a hundred more in 2007. Rather than taking action, the federal government under George W. Bush passed the buck to local authorities and let the problem grow worse nationwide.
The 60 Minutes report offered compelling evidence that it could happen again. My previous home, Pittsburgh, is ground zero for decaying bridges. The report showed the Liberty Ave. Bridge to be slowly rotting away, while other bridges needed cement barriers built under them to prevent pieces of concrete from falling onto traffic passing below the bridge. In my current home, Philadelphia, in 2008, a group of contractors by chance discovered a major crack in a support column for I-95, probably averting a catastrophe.
I have seen conservative internet commenters try to claim that our decaying infrastructure is just a boogeyman conceived by unions to generate more jobs. As the reported pointed out, this is one of the few issues on which unions and the US Chamber of Commerce have been able to agree. At a Congressional hearing, the head of the Chamber of Commerce and the head of the AFL-CIO came together to endorse a raise in the gasoline tax in order to fund infrastructure improvements.
Now would actually be a good time to implement such action. With gas prices at a low, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, introducing such a tax would come at a minimum of pain. Furthermore, increased infrastructure spending would offer some much needed jobs, probably far more than the Republicans' beloved Keystone X-L pipeline.
That said, I'm not getting my hopes up. More likely the status quo will remain in place until a major bridge collapses and kills a hundred people or more, at which point our politicians will-hopefully-be shamed into action.