Walcher: The problem is serious, the response isn’t

President Biden travelled to Pittsburgh last week to push his proposed $1.2 trillion “Build Back Better Act.” In one of the great coincidences in the annals of political strategy, a major bridge collapsed just before his arrival, sending a bus and four cars into the ravine. Fortunately, nobody was killed, unlike the horrific 2007 collapse of the Minneapolis bridge that took down 111 cars, killing 13 and injuring 145.

Biden used the collapse to illustrate the dire need to repair and modernize America’s infrastructure. Perfect timing. Allegheny County, Pennsylvania has 446 bridges, 40% of them classified in poor condition. Colorado has well over 100 bridges in similarly poor condition. Biden, calling for passage of his bill, vowed, “I will fix them all.”

He won’t, but not because the problem isn’t real. Crumbling infrastructure is, in fact, one of America’s most deadly serious problems. The American Road and Transportation Builders Association analyzes federal data for an annual report on bridges. The 2019 data showed more than 47,000 bridges in the U.S. in “poor condition and in need of urgent repairs.” The organization estimates that with current funding levels, it will take more than 80 years to fix them all.