Evoking the tragedy of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse, Sen. Amy Klobuchar is making a push for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to prioritize federal funding to repair the nation’s — and Minnesota’s — failing bridges.
“Minnesotans will never forget the day when the I-35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River, taking the lives of thirteen people and injuring many more,” Klobuchar wrote in a letter to Buttigieg obtained by the Pioneer Press. In the letter, Klobuchar includes a map showing the 631 Minnesota bridges rated in poor condition by the Federal Highway Administration, meaning they’re in need of repair if they are to remain open.
Her push comes as fellow Democrat President Joe Biden and his allies seek support for Biden’s $2 trillion “American Jobs Plan,” a massive infrastructure spending proposal that seeks to rebuild some 10,000 bridges across the nation, among other public works ambitions. The plan faces an uphill commute through Congress, especially in the tightly divided Senate, where Republicans are especially leery of a series of tax hikes to help pay for the plan.
FAILING BRIDGES?
The status of America’s bridges remains problematic more than a decade after the I-35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007 — an event that shone a spotlight on the issue.
At the time, just under 9 percent of bridges in Minnesota — more than 1,100 — were deemed “structurally deficient,” the term used at the time. Officials were troubled to learn that at the time of the bridge’s sudden collapse during an August evening rush hour, more than 100 bridges were actually in worse condition.
Rapidly, the neglect of bridges — long warned by civil engineers — jolted state and federal lawmakers into action, and both Minnesota and America as a whole have made progress since. By the 10th anniversary of the I-35W collapse, Minnesota had cut its number of structurally deficient bridges by a third, with an emphasis on spans that carry the most traffic. Today, the number in “poor condition” — 631 — is generally considered to be the closest figure for comparison.
Nonetheless, the closely watched annual “Report Card” from the American Society of Civil Engineers last month gave the nation’s bridges a “C” grade and warned that the rate of progress has slowed — and the number of “good” bridges had begun to be outpaced by those falling into “fair” condition.
STATE FUNDING?
Poor bridges are scattered across the state. Last year, a $1.9 billion state public works bill approved by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Tim Walz included $700 million for highway projects, including bridges. Among the projects funded was a plan to replace the crumbling Third Street/Kellogg Boulevard Bridge in St. Paul, which was forced to eliminate a lane of traffic after a post-I-35W collapse inspection revealed it might not be able to handle the weight of its full capacity.
This year, Democratic lawmakers are seeking a 5-cent hike to the state’s gasoline tax to fund road and bridge repairs, but Republicans, who control the Senate, have said they’re opposed to any tax increases. Meanwhile, Walz’s public works plan proposed for this year is, sticking with an every-other-year convention, much smaller than last year’s and focuses on state-owned buildings.
Regardless, the sheer volume of the nation’s poor bridges means that the only way significant headway can be made in the near future is with the heft of federal government spending, according to congressional research and independent analyses.
FAULTY I-35W LEGACY?
Attempting to leverage the symbol of the I-35W bridge as part of a sales pitch for new spending isn’t new, and Klobuchar knows that Buttigieg, a former mayor, is well acquainted with how neglected infrastructure can affect the lives of regular folks.
“The collapse of I-35W remains a tragic reminder of what can happen if we fail to maintain public infrastructure, especially our bridges,” Klobuchar writes.
But the I-35W bridge’s lesson isn’t quite that.
An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the bridge’s fate was essentially sealed in 1961 when engineers from a long-defunct firm failed to make a crucial calculation when the bridge was still on the drawing board: They designed the bridge with a certain structure element — a gusset plate that holds beams together — too thin for the size of the bridge.
Investigators found that inspectors over the years might have been able to detect that the plate was being stressed, but they wouldn’t have known to look for it. Fundamentally, the NTSB concluded, the bridge’s collapse wasn’t a case of failed maintenance, despite politicians occasionally holding the tragedy up as an example of that.
In a recent speech on his infrastructure plan, Biden himself appeared to evoke the I-35W bridge.
“It’ll fix the nation’s 10 most economically significant bridges in America that require replacement,” Biden said of the American Jobs Plan in a March 31 speech in Pittsburgh. “Remember that bridge that went down? We got 10 of the most economically significant bridges with more commerce going across it that need to be replaced.”
It was possible Biden was instead referring to a 2018 deadly collapse of a pedestrian bridge in Florida, but that collapse was also the result of a design flaw.
