Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: Now Can We Fix the Infrastructure?

You know what’s a really comforting feeling these days in America? Being in your car at a stoplight underneath a railroad overcrossing with a train going over it, and inspecting the crumbling concrete and peeling lead-based paint on the girders. I saw this post in the DMI Blog a few weeks back, after the steam pipe blew out in New York City last month. I bookmarked it for use later as a point of departure for a post about the public health implications of infrastructure – roads, pipelines, water and wastewater treatment plants, and so forth. Things being what they are, the topic got set aside and the post never got written.

As you have probably heard by now, a freeway bridge across the Mississippi River collapsed in Minneapolis this evening during rush-hour traffic. There are injuries, and three fatalities so far. This sort of thing should not be a surprise. In 2005, the American Society of Civil Engineers report card gave U.S. infrastructure an overall “D” average, and concluded that an investment of $1.6 trillion was needed over the next five years for infrastructure improvements.

Of course, we’re heading in the opposite direction. On the ASCE web site, there was also a news item that the Highway Transportation Fund could experience a $4.3 billion shortfall by 2009 (of course that begs the question of why we’re investing in highways with the onset of Peak Oil, but that’s a discussion for another day). The impending infrastructure decay isn’t surprising. The failed disaster response and reconstruction effort from Hurricane Katrina didn’t shake the Bush Administration from its torpor, and this event probably won’t either.

If the idea of a freeway bridge folding up underneath you isn’t a sufficiently graphic depiction of infrastructure collapse, maybe this is.