CHICAGO — A year after the collapse of Minneapolis' Interstate 35W bridge, which killed 13 people and injured more than 100, the drive to improve the safety of the nation's bridges has faded amid waning public interest to fund such projects in a souring economy.
"The push to repair bridges and our country's infrastructure has become a victim of the bad economy," said Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat who, along with California GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and others, is calling for more federal aid to repair deteriorating highways and bridges. "If we don't put money into our roads and bridges and infrastructure, our economy will get even worse. We won't be able to transport anything across this country."
Of the nearly 600,000 public road bridges listed in the Federal Highway Administration's inventory, about 152,000 are classified as either functionally obsolete or structurally deficient, according to a report released this week by the American Assn. of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Fixing them all would cost about $140 billion, the group found.
Much of the money for bridge repairs on public roads comes from the federal Highway Trust Fund, primarily financed by a federal gasoline tax. But as soaring fuel costs have prompted Americans to drive fewer miles, the fund is dwindling.
Last week, the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed a $1-billion bill to mandate repairs of federal bridges designated structurally deficient, and to require inspections and a list of those that needed help. The bill was sharply scaled back from one introduced soon after the Minnesota collapse. President Bush has promised to veto it.
"That billion dollars is really just a down payment, because we don't have a true handle of what the costs are going to be," said bill author James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.).
Earlier this week, the National Transportation Safety Board released new evidence in the I-35W investigation, including a report showing that a gusset plate that connected support beams beneath the bridge had fractured along a corroded section -- a potential concern that state transportation officials had identified at least 15 years ago but had not seen as critical enough to repair.
The board did not draw any conclusions about what caused last summer's collapse; neither has it ruled out the possibility that the state missed evidence that could have prevented the failure.
