Another Reactive Moment

Even where the federal government is prepared to provide funding to states to enhance roads, bridges, dams and levees, the matching funding necessary to upgrade the site or add new infrastructure often just isn’t there. And so we return to those thrilling days of yesteryear – which is most certainly a process that has continued into the “now” – when major upgrades and repairs occur only after a major disaster. And when such disaster strikes, you have: (i) instant chaos, (ii) no planning to cover the disruption of the lost infrastructure, (iii) a need to accelerate “the fix” which adds untold costs to a process that would have been managed from a cost perspective absent the emergency (think “round-the-clock” crews), (iv) unplanned economic loss as access to the lost structure impacts interstate commercial and local commuting, and (v) a slam to local budgets from an unanticipated event.

Yet this is the new America, a harsh difference from the post WWII-Eisenhower era when growth and expansion were the driving force in our nation. Now we seem to be on the defensive everywhere. Our schools are not competitive, but we won’t spend the money to fix them. Our infrastructure is crumbling, but we won’t spend the money to fix it. Where is our money going? To defend our inferior schools and crumbling and unrepaired infrastructure. While the President is trying to shift our priorities from perpetual wartime – with really strong resistance from the conservative right – and our budget for Homeland Security is soaring, exactly what are they protecting?! Sure we need to guard our borders and protect our citizens, but we also need to make sure that what we have is sufficiently cared for to be worthy of protecting!

Crumbling infrastructure is nothing new, and climate change with massive new challenges – as evidenced by the devastation left behind by Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy – is only going to accelerate and expand the eventual devastation. The tornado that slammed into a suburb of Oklahoma City may or may not have been the result of climate change, but the folks there are suffering nonetheless. In 2007, 13 people were killed and 145 injured when the Saint Anthony Falls Bridge, which carried Interstate 35 across the Mississippi in Minnesota, collapsed.

And whether it was from the weight of or a minor bump from an oversized loaded truck on May 23^rd, a span of Interstate 5 (above) – that artery that runs from our border with Mexico, through Los Angeles, the Bay Area up through Oregon and Washington until it reaches Canada – collapsed over the Skagit River, an hour north of Seattle. An average of 67,000 drivers a day crossed that span, a 58-year-old bridge that was just slightly beyond its originally-designed useful life, a description that probably accounts for the majority of America’s infrastructure. Recent inspections had shown that it wasn’t significantly unsafe as compared to other similar structures. In fact, in Washington State alone, there are over 700 structures that a considered in worse shape than the span that fell. No one was hurt.

But money is short in budget-impaired Washington (not much different from most American states), and whether they can afford to match federal funds for major required repairs across the state remains a question. “[Governor Jay] Inslee said in an interview that a broader message of the collapse is that state financing for state transportation projects — now under consideration in a special session of the Legislature — can no longer wait, especially for the long-delayed Columbia River project… ‘It shouldn’t take an oversize load to let us know we have an oversized problem,’ he said…  Washington State faces a deadline this year to find money for the $3.2 billion project over the Columbia River, or risk losing up to $1.2 billion in federal financing. Oregon’s Legislature has approved $450 million, but Washington State’s $450 million share has been stalled. About $1 billion would come from tolls.

“Building America’s Future, an advocacy group founded by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and two former governors, Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, also issued a statement characterizing the bridge collapse as a ‘call to action.’

“‘Regardless of how this happened, the collapse of the Skagit River Bridge in Washington State is a timely reminder of our nation’s need to invest in critical infrastructure upgrades,’ Mr. Rendell said. ‘Our nation’s bridges, roads and highways are deteriorating before our eyes.’ … But Washington’s secretary of transportation, Lynn Peterson, said it was clear that money would remain tight. The bridge was constructed of four 160-foot sections, three of which could be restored to use pending inspection, she said. ‘Under current fiscal constraints, there is no intent at this point to rebuild the entire bridge,’ she said.” New York Times, May 24^th.

How bad is it? Forget about highways, dams and levees. Just look at bridges: “There are 66,749 structurally deficient bridges and 84,748 functionally obsolete bridges in the U.S., including Puerto Rico, according to the Federal Highway Administration. That's about a quarter of the 607,000 total bridges nationally. States and cities have been whittling down that backlog, but slowly. In 2002, about 30 percent of bridges fell into one of those two categories.” Huffington Post, May 25^th.

Even when bridges weaken over time, sometimes the first step is to curtail the weight of traffic passing over them (reduced lanes, weight restrictions, slower managed traffic flow, etc.). Next, temporary fixes can buy time, but for the most part, these deficiencies are often simply ignored. Eventually, there is a piper waiting to get paid. Maybe tens of thousands of pipers needed to address an estimate $2 trillion of deferred maintenance… just waiting for another tragedy to occur.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time that we reprioritized our society to work for our actual benefit and growth and forget the slogan-mongering that got us into this mess in the first place.