Let's Get Cracking on America's Infrastructure

We Texans are used to having governors whose IQs are not much higher than room temperature. But surely someone was fooling with the incumbent's thermostat when he responded to a recent report about the state of our state's bridges.

The Associated Press did a nationwide survey of bridge conditions in 2007, and it has now done a follow-up piece to assess progress. The first report found that 20 heavily traveled Texas spans were classified "structurally deficient" by highway authorities. A year later, only one has been fixed. Oh, tut-tut rebutted sitting Texas Gov. Rick Perry, this is not an issue of importance, because "structurally deficient" is nothing but a "bureaucratic term."

Hmmm. Maybe the guv would like to try this phrase on the families of the 13 people killed last August when the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis collapsed. It, too, was categorized as structurally deficient.

Far from being meaningless bureaucratese, engineers apply this term to bridges that are so deteriorated they must be repaired or closely monitored. America's 590,000 bridges are rated on a scale of 1 to 100, and any scoring 80 or lower are problematic enough to qualify for federal repair funds. The Minneapolis overpass rated 50 when it went down. One of the Texas bridges has a score of 46.

What we have here is an abject failure of political leadership going back 30 years. Budget-slashing, no-tax boneheads took over the public debate in the late 1970s, pushing an ideological agenda that bulldozed common sense. Politicians of both parties simply quit doing the year-in-year-out maintenance necessary to keep our national house from ... well, from collapsing.

They've gotten away with it because the public never sees stress cracks and other ominous signs of deterioration in bridges, so "let 'em go" became the political wisdom.

Better to look like a budget whacker or to spend on sexier items, such as financing a football stadium. But the bill for infrastructure keeps adding up. A report from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials lays the current tab on the table: $140 billion just to repair America's existing bridges.

The report, titled "Bridging the Gap" (www.transportation1.org/BridgeReport/), says nearly one in four need work. Most are designed to last a maximum of 50 years, and the average age of the country's spans is already 43 years — with one in five having passed the half-century mark. Meanwhile, more vehicles are on the road every year, and the cost of repairs is increasing dramatically.

Then there is the alarming inaccuracy of the National Bridge Inventory, which is compiled from state records. After the Minneapolis crash, federal authorities mandated an emergency inspection of all similar steel deck truss bridges. The inventory listed 756 of these. Wrong. Inspectors found that 280 were not that type at all. Indeed, 16 didn't even exist, 13 were wooden, and a Maryland bridge was actually in Pennsylvania.

"The data is not as good as we thought," explained the embarrassed man in charge. Obviously not, which leads to the more urgent question of how many bridges are misclassified as another type when they're really made of steel deck trusses, like the fallen one in Minneapolis. The feds don't know.

Come on, people, this is America, the can-do country of enormous wealth, enterprise and public spirit! Not only must these essential assets be fixed and kept up, but a national infrastructure program would also provide an enormous economic boost all across the country, putting millions of our people to work. This is not a cost, it's an opportunity. Start demanding that every political candidate — from city council to president — get on the ball.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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