Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Shows US Infrastructure Needs Work

Wednesday night, Interstate-35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, suddenly collapsed, killing at least seven people. Some 100,000 vehicles cross the Mississippi River each day on this bridge. In 2001, Minnesota’s Department of Transportation found “several fatigue problems” in the approach spans, and the main truss had “poor fatigue details.” In 2005, the Federal Department of Transportation’s National Bridge Inventory database said the bridge was “structurally deficient.” The saddest part of all, apart from the loss of life, is that this bridge is not unique.

The I-35W bridge is the seventh major bridge collapse in the US in the last four decades. Civil engineers work with what they know, build the best they can, and sometimes, their knowledge proves insufficient or some event is not factored into their calculations. When that happens, one hopes for minimal damage and better plans in future. That doesn’t seem to be the problem here. This was a case of needed maintenance going undone.

In response to the steam pipe break that messed up the evening commute in Manhattan a couple of weeks ago, the American Society of Civil Engineers announced that the country needs to spend $1.6 trillion over the next five years to bring everything up to snuff. With regard to bridges, the ASCE reported in 2005, “Between 2000 and 2003, the percentage of the nation’s 590,750 bridges rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete decreased slightly from 28.5% to 27.1%. However, it will cost $9.4 billion a year for 20 years to eliminate all bridge deficiencies.” That’s around $180 billion total, yet when budgets need balancing, funds for maintenance are always cut.

One of the key components to a properly functioning economy is a decent infrastructure. If the rails, roads and air travel systems aren’t any good, the nation is not going to enjoy the kind of economic growth it would if those systems were first-rate. As big as the Roman Empire was, administration was effective even when horseback was the fastest mode of travel because the Romans built roads that are still usable today.

Is $1.6 trillion feasible? Not without tax increases and the sale of more government bonds. Is it worth the expenditure? Almost certainly. It will mean jobs, it will mean more efficient transportation, and above all, it will mean saving lives. If America does nothing, the disaster of I-35W will be repeated, and eventually, bridge collapses won’t be the lead story because they will have become so common.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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