US Features
Bridge disaster shows US infrastructure woes
By Tony Czuczka Aug 3, 2007, 23:15 GMT
Washington - Even before a deadly highway bridge collapse in Minnesota state, Americans had warnings that infrastructure is crumbling in the world's richest nation.
Experts have said for years that US roads, bridges, water supplies, electricity grids, schools and railroads are strained and ageing, eaten away by tight money for maintenance and expansion.
Wednesday's crash of a highway span into the Mississippi River, which killed at least five, has confronted Americans with the crisis - and emboldened critics who say some of the 500 billion dollars spent on the Iraq war should have been used to rebuild America.
'This is yet another wakeup call for the nation's infrastructure,' said James Oberstar, a US Congressman from Minnesota.
Still stung by his government's botched emergency response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, President George W Bush scheduled a visit to the stricken city of Minneapolis for Saturday.
People from other rich nations often marvel at America's perilous state of repair. Overhead power and telephone lines regularly snap in storms, key roads are scarred with pot-holes. Last month, an underground steam pipe explosion in New York killed a woman.
Many parts of the 74,000-kilometre US national highway system are between 40 and 60 years old, but fixing the problem is another story. Pouring tens of billions of dollars into renewal would mean unpopular tax hikes - notably on fuel.
Minnesota's Republican governor Tim Pawlenty in May vetoed a 5- cent petrol tax increase, the state's first in nearly 20 years, that might have gone to road repair.
Yet the crisis runs deeper, involving state governments as well as federal authorities, Republicans and Democrats.
'Both political parties have tried to govern on the cheap, and both have dithered and dallied and spent public wealth on stadiums while scrimping on the basics,' columnist Nick Coleman wrote in the local Minneapolis Star Tribune. 'Shame is overdue.'
US needs are huge by any measure. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives much of the nation's infrastructure near-failing grades and estimates that 1.6 trillion dollars over five years are needed to bring it to 'a good condition.'
Another daunting statistic emerged in the wake of the Minneapolis disaster: about a quarter of the nation's nearly 600,000 bridges have structural problems or are outdated.
Every state has interstate highway spans that government inspectors have declared structurally deficient, led by tiny Rhode Island, where the figure is 24 per cent.
The Minnesota bridge reportedly had a structural rating in the lowest 6 per cent of urban bridges in the interstate highway system. Inspectors found problems as far back as 1990, but declared no imminent danger as recently as last summer.
In response to the collapse, the US government urged all states to inspect any highway bridges similar to the one that collapsed.
US Transportation Secretary Mary Peters also ordered a review of the national bridge inspection programme, which has been looking at ways to improve its technology.
But the emotional impact was summed up by Amy Klobuchar, a US senator from Minnesota who lives about 10 blocks from the bridge.
'A bridge in the middle of America just shouldn't fall into a river,' she said.
The last big US bridge collapse blamed on structural failure happened on the New York State Thruway in 1987, killing 10 people. Several major highway collapses since then were caused by accidents or earthquakes.
Now, officials say it may take years to find out what went wrong with the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Also, ask yourselves just what kind of value we get for the dollars we spend.
A simple bridge over the S. Umpqua river in Oregon, clearly not one of the great rivers of the world, took almost two years to complete. The unionized, feather bedded, state driven building machine probably doubles the cost of a bridge that could have been made using modularized construction, and dropped in after the mountings were built. Honestly, we use 100 year old technology to make a brand new bridge.
buiding bridges and maintaining infrastructures is not at the top of the the Hip list. The loser Greenhouse gas lobby has hijacked the agenda. Bush has squandered his time in office with that giant albatros the Iraq guagmire.....yeesh. trillions spent and nothing to show for it.
RE:'buiding bridges and maintaining infrastructures is not at the top of the the Hip list. The loser Greenhouse gas lobby has hijacked the agenda. Bush has squandered his time in office with that giant albatros the Iraq guagmire.....yeesh. trillions spent and nothing to show for it.'
Not quite the point. For decades we have supposedly been spending tons and tons of money on our infrastructure, both for extensions and maintenance. Much of this was spent DURING times of war. Why do we still have substandard bridges and roads? The state of New York has a number of very heavily traveled bridges that are in far worse shape than the bridge that just collapsed in Minnesota. Why is this the case despite all the spending? Where did all that money go? It has nothing to do with any of the wars. That money was allocated during and despite any wars we were engaged in. Where did the money go? What was it ACTUALLY spent on? Why haven't the worst of our bridges been repaired?
Why inspect at all if the result is a bureaucratic machine that has the legal capability to ignore it? Why bother doing anything at the state level if all that will happen when a disaster strikes is that a state or local leader can just blame the president, and get away with it? What a great scam.
RE:'Why inspect at all if the result is a bureaucratic machine that has the legal capability to ignore it? Why bother doing anything at the state level if all that will happen when a disaster strikes is that a state or local leader can just blame the president, and get away with it? What a great scam.'
Your point is well taken! Every state government taxes fuel ostensibly to maintain roads and bridges. The Federal government taxes fuel, ostensibly to maintain roads and bridges. Nearly every year, Congress allocates sizable sums of money devoted to what? Roads and bridges!
The amount of money we are spending on roads and bridges is gargantuan. It would likely exceed the complete budgets of several European countries.
WHY ARE WE HAVING A PROBLEM WITH BRIDGES IN A STATE OF ILL REPAIR?
Governor: We want to thank you Mr. president for helping with bridge repair!
Bush: Why certainy guvnah, afta all, that's all we got ta doo heah up in ol DC, y knoow? Yep, we all is about asleep ovah his war on terrah an all...certainly...we can hep make up a new bridge when a welder and some flat iahn coulda fixed it!
Nahce thing too ...guvnah...aboot passin th blame t the oval office. Imagine y sef with that bowlegged wahfe o bills, or th colored fella as president. Hell...who'd ya blame thin, boyh? Y all would be standin t getha singin cumbaya an rockin in place, claimin t hep th little childin...welll....not th ones' on that bridge or in Waco...but th utha's I'm guessin...with no neocons t blame th dance gits a lot tougha, huh?
By th way guvnah, anythin else th great state o Minnesota needs...runin wtah maybe...how abooot electric lahts, or flushin toilets...we got all this in utha places an we're happah t share! y all give us a call now..heah?
How fast this story died? Not quite as fast as the bridge victims, but close!
Oh, it was supplanted by the mine collapse in Utah. Trouble at a mine is great for newsies and politicians alike. It gives them a chance to stand in front of the cameras and look heroic even though it is someone else taking all the risks in the rescue efforts. All the bridge collapse does is embarrass them.
Here in Florida I have a power outage very week! And that's without a storm! All in the name of profit. Why modernize when you can do patch work repairs? Keep the profits high and charge a bundle. Making money is the goal. Well, eventually we all have to pay for it while the heads of the corporations retire with millions of dollars.
...your liberal leadership is never going to allow new electrical infrastructure building permits, so the problem is just going to get worse. It will either be the environmentalists stalling them in court or libnazi politicians who will only roll for soft-eco-wind, solar, etc.
That being the case i.e. government making new infrastructure too risky to build for business, why would they do it?
No Fred, go see the other guys.
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NoharnessAug 3rd, 2007 - 23:30:11
Quoting the article:'Experts have said for years that US roads, bridges, water supplies, electricity grids, schools and railroads are strained and ageing, eaten away by tight money for maintenance and expansion.'
This became a major issue under Bush the Elder. It was a major issue under Bill Clinton. The only reason it has not become a major issue under the Bushbaby is because of the World Trade Center Atrocity and the subsequent war.
Congress has spent trillions on our infrastructure, or have at least passed bills that were intended to both maintain and expand our infrastructure. Perhaps it is time for us to take a hard look at where all that money went.
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