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Future of Our Economy Depends on Infrastructure |
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The collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis last week is a tragic reminder that our nation’s infrastructure is aging and in serious need of repair. At least five people died, and many more were injured or missing when the bridge fell apart during rush hour.
The missing include an Operating Engineers member working on the bridge, and the injured include AFSCME members inspecting construction work on the bridge. Click here and here to read firsthand accounts of the tragedy.
The tragedy has put the condition of the nation’s roads, bridges, railroads and other parts of the infrastructure on the national political agenda. At the AFL-CIO Presidential Candidates Forum Tuesday night in Chicago, the first question was about infrastructure.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said that instead of putting billions of dollars into Iraq, funding should be directed at rebuilding roads, bridges and mines. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.),. who has proposed a National Commission on Infrastructure, said the rebuilding would create jobs and is necessary because we “need a better infrastructure to protect us.”
The other candidates in the forum—Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Joseph Biden (D-Del.), former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio)—also have come out for strengthening our infrastructure.
The I-35 bridge collapse could have been avoided if maintenance work had been performed, according to yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune. Reporter Pat Doyle writes that state engineers recommended in 2000 that the bridge be replaced or redecked. As far back as 1996, the engineers had raised questions about the bridge’s safety.
On CNN, Doyle said engineers were so concerned that
they ended some reports with exclamation points.
The Star Tribune said that two years ago a consultant hired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) recommended that steel plates be used to reinforce the bridge superstructure, but
MnDOT opted for what they refer to as a more efficient or most cost-efficient alternative to that which is essentially inspecting the bridge.
Saying “our maintenance of our bridges and highways [has] been cut back for too long,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced he will introduce legislation next month to double a proposed federal transportation bill appropriation, with a focus on upkeep, to $10 billion. But President Bush, who promised Minnesotans the government would do whatever is necessary to rebuild the highway, already has said he will veto the pending transportation bill, which currently includes nearly $5 billion for national bridge and highway maintenance.
As Think Progress notes, Bush made the same claims when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans:
In a visit to the collapsed bridge in Minneapolis…Bush vowed to aid in reconstruction efforts. But the Associated Press reports that “nearly two years ago, with parts of New Orleans still under water after Hurricane Katrina, Bush made similar declarations in the French Quarter, promising that the government would ’stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.’ “
New Orleans City Councilwoman Shelley Midura remarked: “I’m sorry, it takes more than a simple sentence.”
Such empty talk is endemic among followers of Bush & Co., including Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R). Acccording to The New York Times, in the past two years, Pawlenty twice vetoed legislation to raise the state’s gas tax to pay for transportation needs. The Times also reports that Congress has failed to step up to the plate when it comes to maintaining our roads. Like the sports fan who applaud the flashy superstar but ignores his supporting cast, legislators have funded popular projects while ignoring the dull everyday maintenance of our infrastructure. The Times points out:
Despite historic highs in transportation spending, the political muscle of lawmakers, rather than dire need, has typically driven where much of the money goes. That has often meant construction of new, politically popular roads and transit projects rather than the mundane work of maintaining the worn-out ones.
On Daily Kos, Meteor Blades notes that repairing our infrastructure “ought to be a no-brainer.”
It’s understandable in impoverished Chad or Haiti or East Timor or the back country of the People’s Republic of China. But there is no excuse for lethal tumbledown infrastructure in this country. Congress gave Mister Bush $1.35 trillion in tax cuts. Congress has appropriated $600 billion (so far, with more to come) for a war that should never have happened. Congress enables the military-industrial complex to vacuum up additional hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars annually.
It will take more than promises to solve the problem. According to the U.S. Transportation Department, more than one in four bridges in the nation are either “structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete.” A structurally deficient bridge is either closed or restricted to light traffic, while a functionally obsolete bridge is older and not designed to handle the volume and weight of today’s traffic. Click on the chart above to see a list of the trouble bridges in your state.
The AFL-CIO repeatedly has urged the nation’s political leaders to address our aging infrastructure in convention resolutions and, most recently after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
At its summer meeting in Chicago yesterday, members of the Executive Council renewed their call for Congress and the president to rebuild America. The Council’s statement said:
Our government must make the significant investments needed to upgrade and maintain the nation’s infrastructure. We need to find the resources to make this happen and ensure that we take advantage of this opportunity to create good jobs for America’s workers, both in construction and production of the materials needed. This will require courage, leadership and vision, but we cannot afford not to act.
The Council’s statement echoes the reaction of AFSCME’s Minnesota Council 5, whose members were injured when the bridge collapsed:
The I-35W bridge collapse has horrified us. In America, bridges should not collapse.
In its statement, the Executive Council points out that the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has spoken out for years about imminent problems.
ASCE’s “2005 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” gave the nation a “D.” The group estimated that a $1.6 trillion investment over the next five years is needed to fix these problems and rebuild America. The report is both a damning indictment of neglect and a recipe for disaster:
Consider just a few of these facts from the ASCE:
- 27.1 percent of the nation’s 590,750 bridges were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. It will cost $9 billion a year for 20 years to eliminate all bridge deficiencies.
- Poor road conditions cost U.S. motorists $54 billion a year in repairs and operating costs, and congestion on the nation’s roadways costs drivers $63 billion a year. However, the $59 billion spent annually is well below the $94 billion needed each year to improve transportation infrastructure.
- Limited rail capacity has created significant chokepoints and delays. However, freight rail is expected to increase at least 50 percent by 2020. In addition, intercity passenger and commuter rail service is recognized as a good investment. Each year, $12 billion to $13 billion is needed to maintain existing rail infrastructure and expand for future growth.
- Waterways move large volumes of bulk commodities at a fraction of the cost of rail or trucks, but of the 257 locks on 12,000 miles of inland waterways operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, nearly 50 percent are functionally obsolete. By 2020 this will rise to 80 percent.
- Federal funding for drinking water and wastewater systems remains at $850 million annually, less than 10 percent of the total national requirement. Aging systems discharge billions of gallons of untreated sewage into U.S. surface waters each year. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that $390 billion will be needed over the next 20 years to adequately address these problems.
- Between 1998 and 2005, the number of unsafe dams rose by 33 percent to more than 3,500. It will take $10.1 billion over the next 12 years to address all critical nonfederal dams. By 2005, there were more than 11,000 high-hazard-potential dams—dams whose failure would cause loss of human life.
As the AFL-CIO Executive Council statement says:
Our nation cannot continue to careen from one preventable disaster to another. The future of our economy and our quality of life depend on the health of the nation’s infrastructure. Investing in it will create good jobs while improving the living standards of working families and their communities.
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Holy cow!! One bridge falls and Chicken Little comes out and starts yelling, “the sky is falling!!”. I am a bridge tender in Old Sacramento California and my bridge will be 100 years old in 2011………I’m not the least bit worried about it. But, as long as we’re on the subject, why doesn’t someone find out what Arnold did with our road repair money??
As a union member from the greater New York area, I’d like to comment about the bridges I drive on regularly. Almost all of the bridges connecting the borough of Manhatten with the outer boroughs, are not only toll bridges, but have VERY dear tolls to pay. And while it seems appropriate to many to ask the federal government for financial assistance to maintain these bridges, it seems much more logical to me to ask “where is all this toll money going?” And even more specific, these bridges I’m concerned with are much, much older then the failed bridge in question, “why are these bridges not being totally rebuilt every 20 years, using nothing more then the toll money that is still being collected on 100 year old bridges?” I do not know, as the media has not told me, whether the failed Minnesota bridge was a toll bridge, but I DO know that that bridge, (condemned in the media as obsolete), is newer then any major bridge in my neighborhood. In most cases, MUCH newer. And I suspect that, once again, if money collected was actually spent on what it was originally dedicated to be spent on, there would be no issue with failing infrastructure. Or a reason to look to the federal government for a bailout because of misappropriation of funds by our local politicians.
Are our nation’s public schools also “structurally deficient”?
By Phyllis C. Murray
“The richest nation on earth has never allocated enough of its abundant resources to build sufficient schools, to compensate adequately its teachers, and to surround them with the prestige their work justifies. We squander funds on highways and the frenetic pursuit of recreation, on the over abundance of overkill armaments, but we pauperized education.” From Martin Luther King’s Speech UFT Spring Conference 1964
But, how is education pauperized ,today?
January 30, 2007- “Just last week, 300 New Orleans school children were shut out of schools and denied an education they badly need because the city says it doesn’t have enough space or teachers. So, instead of studying in classrooms, 300 students are sitting at home waiting for space to open up in schools.” James Parks AFL-CIO Weblog
February 2007- “The first district is New Orleans, where the Bush US Department of Education and the Louisiana governor used the devastation caused by Katrina as an opportunity to dismantle the public school system. Like everything else that the Bush administration has done in post-Katrina New Orleans, the result was a manmade catastrophe on top of the natural disaster.” Leo Casey, Edwize-UFT
It is inconceivable to think that there are children in this great nation who are missing out on an education. And if something is not done very soon, history will repeat itself.
History teaches us that the students of Prince Edward County were denied the benefits of a public education in Prince Edward County from 1959 - 1964. For five years the public schools were closed . Hence, the black students who remained in Prince Edward County were not afforded the benefits of any formal education. have been variously dubbed “the lost generation” and “the crippled generation” by reporters and researchers studying the long-term effects of educational deprivation.” Bagly-Longwood College-Virginia
How are funds squandered on the frenetic pursuit of recreation, today?
It is ironic that the bridge which collapsed in Minneapolis caused a cancellation of a ground breaking ceremony for a new baseball stadium. Furthermore there is a proposal for another stadium under consideration on the University of Minnesota’s campus estimated at $288 million. It is reported that this stadium would be funded with private and corporate contributions, as well as funds from the state of Minnesota.
How do we squander funds “on the over abundance of overkill armaments” today?
Case in point, the war in Iraq: “If we can spend 10 billion dollars on an unnecessary war, we can feed the minds of our kids.” said Congressman Charles Rangel, Chair of the Ways and Means Committee.”We cannot survive by losing one half of the brain power.”
Therefore, I believe a basic education should not be a dream deferred but a dream realized. Our public schools must become structurally sufficient. Our public schools can no longer afford to produce youth who,like former slaves, are “partially educated sufficient to make their work efficient, but insufficient to raise them to equality.” Martin Luther King 1964 .
And finally, I believe it is necessary for all United States legislators who ran on a platform of educational equity and access must be summoned back to the legislature to map out a plan to get all disenfranchised students back in school. The bridges to nowhere can wait. Surely, the education of all children must be a national priority and not another national tragedy.
Phyllis C. Murray
UFT Chapter Leader
District 8 Region 2
I live in New Mexico. We have a bridge that is similar to that design and spans the Rio Grande Gorge, in Taos County, New Mexico. The Rio Grande Gorge is 672 feet deep. We in New Mexico have a johnny-on-the-spot bridge crew, and a Governor who is on the ball, (when he’s not away campaigning for President). Our bridges are routinely checked, and both Los Alamos Labs, (yes, THE Los Alamos), and New Mexico State University are working on even more technical ways to improve the monitoring of our bridges. But, the solution to this all, is 1. stop the stupid war. 2. re-design the economy to re-build our infrastructure and put people to work at a decent wage, under qualified union contracts. It’s so easy, so simple, but there are those republicans who will lose billions if not trillions, if that happens. So, we as unions must be a part of the Democratic Process that systematically cleans up our Federal Government and returns it to the People for whom it belongs.
After the bridge collapse in Minnesota a few weeks ago, the media talked a lot about Katrina. The only thing I have not heard about is the August 2003 power blackout in the Northeast and Canada. The problem was resolved quickly by local utility companies and state authorities, rather than by the useless Homeland Security department. The power blackout points to the vulnerability the US infrastructure. A fragile power grid to supply the electrical needs of a growing population.
Four years after the blackout, very little done is done to fix the problem. I can remember George W. Bush announcing some grand strategy to deal with the power grid problem. As time passes by, the only thing that he is concerned about is the war in Iraq and more money going toward that war.