The Search for Funds to Fix ‘Deficient’ Bridges

What happened

Federal and state officials scrambled this week to find the money to inspect and repair about 74,000 'œstructurally deficient' bridges in the U.S., after a 40-year-old highway bridge in Minneapolis full of rush-hour traffic abruptly plunged 60 feet into the Mississippi River, killing at least five. More than one in eight bridges in the U.S. were given the same 'œdeficient' rating as the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, and though officials said these other spans were not in danger of collapsing, the American Society of Civil Engineers said that bringing them up to date would cost at least $188 billion. All told, the engineers said, it would cost $1.6 trillion to make needed repairs to the nation's deteriorating bridges and roadways, most of which were built 40 to 50 years ago.

In Minneapolis, a team of Navy divers searched the sediment-filled, rapidly swirling currents of the Mississippi for the eight people who are still missing and presumed drowned. More than 100 people were injured in the collapse, which took 50 cars on the bridge's 1,900-foot-long concrete span on a six-story plunge into the river. Survivors 'œrode' the bridge down, with many scrambling free of the sinking cars. 'œIt felt like an earthquake, it sounded like an explosion,' said one of the 52 children in a school bus that dropped a shorter distance on part of the collapsing span. 'œI realized the bridge was going down. It just fell all the way down.'

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What the editorials said

Tragedies like this are a direct consequence of years of neglect, said The New York Times. 'œWhen budgets are tight, elected officials find it convenient to cut back on maintenance and leave some future administration to deal with the consequences.' Congress is now planning hearings on how to set priorities for repairing our crumbling infrastructure and figure out a way to pay for it. But in politics, 'œenthusiasm quickly flags.' The collapse of the I-35W bridge should serve as 'œa reminder that such long-postponed investments can no longer be neglected.'

It's just not true that taxpayers have been stingy with road money, said The Wall Street Journal. In 2005, the Republican Congress agreed to spend $286 billion on highways and bridges over five years—a big increase from the $217 billion budgeted in 1998. But 'œearmarks'—wasteful pork-barrel projects backed by individual congressmen—have multiplied along with spending. The 1981 highway bill had 10 earmarks. The 2005 bill had 6,371, consuming 10 percent of total highway spending. Congress should let the states set priorities for highway funds, so that instead of funding 'œbridges to nowhere' and unnecessary rural roads named after politicians, taxes are used to repair existing roads and real bridges.

What the columnists said

But where do we find $1.6 trillion? said John Nichols in TheNation.com. That 'œsounds like a lot of money, unless it is compared with the anticipated cost of $1 trillion for completing George Bush's mission in Iraq.' It's all a matter of priorities. For Republicans and the Bush administration, fighting foreign wars and building fortified Green Zones in the Middle East take precedence over repairing bridges in the Midwest.

But even when Congress does spend money on infrastructure, the effort often suffers from a confusion of purpose, said Nicole Gelinas in the New York Post. That's because Congress treats federal transportation bills as opportunities for pork-barrel politics, not as opportunities for rational growth. The states are not blameless, either. 'œStates use infrastructure projects as ways to funnel money to politically favored contractors and powerful construction unions, rather than as worthwhile undertakings to be done as efficiently and effectively as possible.'

It's unrealistic to think the Minneapolis disaster will prompt the nation to seriously address all of its infrastructure problems, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. 'œInfrastructure is boring.' So we'll talk about the problem for a while, until our attention turns elsewhere.

What next?