Despite billions of dollars in federal, state and local funds directed toward the maintenance of existing bridges, 69,223 bridges — 11.5 percent of total highway bridges in the U.S. — are classified as “structurally deficient,” requiring significant maintenance, rehabilitation or replacement.
Two key problems persist: while Congress has repeatedly declared bridge safety a national priority, existing federal programs don’t ensure that aging bridges actually get fixed; and the current level of investment is nowhere near what is needed to keep up with our rapidly growing backlog of aging bridges.
And those trillions of dollars targeted for “shovel ready jobs” ending up in the pockets of the union fatcats.
What a shame!
Pennsylvania is hurting. I’ll be praying for those assholes. Notice that once they cave in, then they get fixed. It’s like, “eh, fuck these people,” Jesus Christ, you’d think the Catholic church could pitch in a few bucks.
If Govt. (Federal and local) have not raided funds specifically raised for road maintenance from gasoline taxes and did its job instead of doing job of every bureaucracy that have ever existed (which is to make itself bigger and more important) we’d be fine.
Every single living President, Governor and Transportation Secretary who ever have spent any of dedicated money for other purpose should be brought to Court. Than we must demand that all dedicated funds can’t be touched no matter the “emergency” and all funds taken away returned ASAP by sell-off of the Govt. property (not by printing or borrowing).
Many of them seem to have been built BSUV (Before Sports Utility Vehicle)
Any State where abortions are performed will be denied Federal Grants for highways and bridges. The abortion performers use the roads too.
Planned Parenthood accounts for 90% of road use.
This has been known for 30 years…
What has been done?
WAR.
sargasso #4
Thank you for pointing out the fact that people who drive SUVs have contributed much more to pay for these repairs by paying more taxes. I know this is what you were talking about because only an idiot would think that SUVs contribute more to the damage.
Only an idiot would see all the big rigs flowing over the US highways and think to blame the guy in the SUV for damaging the roads. Weather probably does 90% of the damage and heavy trucks do most of the rest, but I’m not stupid enough to blame the big trucks for driving on the roads that were built for them to use. Like most people I blame the pols who steal our money and pass it out with the only goal being getting elected to another term, not better or safer roads.
#6 – I’ve never seen an abortion performer. But then again I never get to attend the theatre.
Does kinda give new meaning to “Shovel Ready.”
Ha, ha.
“The states will do a far better job in every area save national defense or border security.”
Alf as someone who does work in state government I can truly say that if you really believe that. Then you are an even bigger idiot than even I give you credit for being, and that’s saying something. The states are given the primacy to do exactly what you’ve stated, they were and are given federal funds through grants, and they utilize their own tax base to supply even more money. Without a fail every state, and I mean every single one of them has managed to fuck it up. How do you think things made it to this point of failure. Its not just bridges or roads. It every single part of the infrastructure drinking water, sewer, roads, bridges, transit, energy, dams, etc. The current ASCE rating for Americas infrastructure is a D, with an estimated 2.2 trillion dollar price tag just to maintain what we have.
http://infrastructurereportcard.org/
You claim to be a conservative yet you would replace the federal government with an even more fucked up mess. You want to lower taxes? All giving it to the states would do is create a nightmare of overlapping regulation from each state. Do you follow the Missouri or the Illinois standards when building a bridge between the two? Who funds which part? What if one state backs out partway through due to budget problems? Where do the states get the extra revenue to provide all the services you would transfer to them? Kiss good bye all the clean water, air, soil, hazardous waste, and solids waste laws, who cares if Missouri pollutes the Mississippi its creating jobs in state, fuck the rest we got ours.
The only difference between state and federal government is the size of the budget, the size of the bureaucracy, and the size of the mistakes.
Gee So What==your entire argument, well stated btw, was that the Feds were naturally suited to do certain jobs, interstate highways fer instance, better than the States.
Then you conclude the Feds only make bigger mistakes.
Whats up with that???? Ohhhhh weeeee, Whats up wid dat? Whats up wid date. Repeat until clear.
Damn Republicans
Lie to KILL America
But must have your vote.
It seems that this data is suspect. Bridges that were constructed in the last three years are rated as a 9.
The traffic counts for the bridges I looked at do not match that data that the state publishes.
What is the source of these ratings and traffic statistics?
I am not sure if one can draw any meaningful conclusions from this data.
#14–Sagrilarus==excellent comment. Makes me think we need a “Google App” that targets infrasturcture ((and everything else in society?)) and amass a data base that some intelligent crawler could review and rank order what needs to be evaluated by hooman eyes?
Skynet or Active Democracy? Which is SyFy?
Yea, verily.
My last statement while contradictory is also true. I suspect its an issue when a bureaucracy reaches a certain size. Its also a bit of an inside joke. I have worked in both city, state, and federal governments. In general the public assumes that because its larger the people in charge of the federal government are smarter than local, ie the president is smarter than a governor who is smarter than a mayor or if you prefer councilperson, state local representative, state federal rep. Time and experience has shown me that they are all pretty much idiots to some degree. I once had a councilman who had a thing about stray cats the feline not the band. I watched the council debate for an hour on what to do. Finally this councilman pops and says why don’t we just build a “cat house.” Everybody sat for a second. Than we rolled across the floor for a good ten minutes while he sat there bewildered. Somebody then explained to him the slang definition for cat house. It showed up in the council minutes as councilman X wants to build a cat house. I still chuckle about that. I recently watched two state reps try and pass bills to modify a law that went expressly against the will of the voters (by the way alf both were republicans) and were just as silly but carry the gravity of their office.
To really make a dent in the infrastructure issue will take both federal, state, and local input. In Missouri alone we have a 40+ billion dollar infrastructure shortfall just with wastewater needs. The entire 2012 state budget for everything will be around 23 billion. Anybody have some spare change?
Our crumbling roads and bridges is what happens when unions and governments conspire to give the contracts to the highest bidder.
As an addendum. Now that I recall the cat house meeting. That councilman was also a republican.
jbenson2, if you took just 1 trillion dollars (you’re saying “trillions”) and divided it amongst the 801,000 union construction workers in the USA then it would be $1.2 million per worker. So if you’re going to make up bullshit facts then at least try to make them believable.
I read somewhere a few weeks ago that a lot of structures will not be as deficient once they receive an inspection.
The National Highway Fund is having to be bailed out due to lower revenues from the Federal $.184/gallon tax. This is due to less driving and more economical cars. New Jersey has the lowest state gasoline tax, approx. $.32 with California having the highest. Taxes are going to have to go up eventually. Oregon wants to tax based on miles driven. So fuel efficient cars are taxed the same as very inefficient cars. This is what is being lost in the arguments for more efficiency. The National Highway Fund isn’t getting enough money. The roads wear just the same. This should move the US away from cars.
US Secretary of Transportation LaHood was the US Rep. from Decateur, Illinois, the hometown of the headquarters of Caterpillar. There was going to be another round of “shovel-ready” work announced. It was going to focus on basically road resurfacing. Just a week before, Caterpillar had just announed that a new road grader plant opened in North Little Rock, Arkansas. A lot of the “shovel-ready” stimulus went to projects that had been dormant for years if not decades. The federal government let the states & localities decide on how to spend the stimulus dollars.
#18 So what – I know that in St. Louis the stormwater drains mix with the sewage pipes. I don’t think that is modern practice.
“Taxes are going to have to go up eventually. Oregon wants to tax based on miles driven. So fuel efficient cars are taxed the same as very inefficient cars. This is what is being lost in the arguments for more efficiency. The National Highway Fund isn’t getting enough money. The roads wear just the same. This should move the US away from cars.”
Start taxing electric cars, natural gas cars, etc.
These bridges will never be fixed. We are broke and can’t afford to fix them, and we are NOT gonna raise taxes on the ultra-rich who make $40,000,000 a year to pay for it!
Our infrastructure is falling apart in our cities, but it will never be fixed. We are broke and can’t afford it, and we are NOT gonna raise taxes on the ultra-rich to make $40,000,000 a year to pay for it!
We are not going to raise taxes on these people since they are the job engines for the U.S. economy. They own the factories and plants in the U.S. and provide jobs for all the poor people.
Oh wait, they own the factories and plants…..they got the Bush tax cuts…..and proceeded to shut down those factories and plants and move the jobs overseas or to Mexico putting millions of Americans out of work…..and the Republicans want to give them MORE tax cuts?????
Face it, folks, we are going to be driving on dirt roads, open sewers on the streets, and all sorts of fun stuff before long, because the “one dollar less than we take in” Republicans are going to make sure of it, meanwhile the ultra-rich will continue to live in their palaces while looking at the serfs out of their gilded windows.
why did they build it like that?
Seems longer then needs to be.
But perhaps the ground was to soft to make a more straight way.. :-/
Huge numbers of otherwise (mostly) sane people have fallen for propaganda that unions are E-E-E-E-VIL, that all taxes are theft, etc., propagated by those who are trying to destroy the greatest country in history. I wish they would all take an extended tour of Haiti (which they are trying to turn the U.S. into) and Somalia (more likely to be the result) to see what life is like with a weak or de facto non-existent central government. The next argument will be based on “The Divine Right of Kings” idea. (“We deserve to rule the slaves because God made us wealthy!”)
I wonder if it’s too late to emigrate…
50% true, 50% fear mongering. I’m more worried about our future generations. The empty buildings and run down ones will be EVERYWHERE!
This is interesting. I’m from 15370. This is a poor area of SW PA. The funny thing is one bridge says average of 5007 cars per day, and another down the road says an average of 20 cars per day. WTF!? Who’s double checking these guys work? Why can they get away with this?
No wonder PA has the highest percent of deficient bridges.
Now lets not mention the dam crises… It’s twice as bad.
#25 – the high raised part presumably crosses the main flow of the river and the navigation channel.
Where possible you cross this channel at right angles, it reduces the scouring effect on the pillars and the collision risk of shipping.
You may also need to curve the approach roads if the surrounding land is low and you need a long run to reach the bridge height at a reasonable grade. It can be cheaper to build off-shore on piles in shallow water than to build a long embankment on soft coastal tidal land.
Disclaimer: The pic is of the Oregon Inlet Bridge, on the Outer Banks of NC.
As a US Coastie, in my my younger days, we were responsible for all traffic,commercial and recreational, in and out of this very dangerous inlet. Winter crossings (commercial fisherman exclusively) were especially fun.
The main span of the bridge has to be rebuilt every decade or so, because of the shifting sands underneath.
The gas tax is a flat fee. It does not change with inflation. The last time my state (Missouri) changed it’s tax was in the early 1990’s with promises the Department of Transportation couldn’t actually meet. And they knew it too.
In effect, everyone is building new roads with fewer “real” dollars every year. What do you think that does to maintenance? New is sexy, fixing stuff is boring.
I’m a civil engineer and work with these things every day- wastewater mostly. We try and try to get people to realize what is coming, but no one likes to be told to eat their broccoli when you can have a tasty big mac.
Infrastructure maintenance generally comes last after operating budget and new stuff. You can’t very well show off some shiny new pipes underground, can you?
The infrastructure apocalypse is coming. It will be here in about 10 years.
#30, When you inflate the money supply and the wealth to perform a function remains unchanged, you eventually run out of dollars to perform the same function.
Let’s print another trillion dollars!
#30, The infrastructure apocalypse is coming. It will be here in about 10 years.
You need to see the movie Atlas Shrugged. It describes this apocalypse in visual detail.
I thank all those tea baggers (of both persuasions) that have insisted on cutting infrastructure maintenance so they can have a few more bucks in their pockets. The poor bastards are in such denial that THEY are the cause of America’s problems.