Bridge collapse shows our needs

The collapse of the Minnesota interstate bridge, coupled with the explosion of a steam tunnel in Manhattan, should arouse the country to the need for massive infrastructure investment — and reform of the way it’s financed.

It’s a miracle that more people weren’t killed and injured in the two instances — or that a major part of America hasn’t experienced an electrical blackout, that two planes haven’t collided in crowded skies or that levees haven’t crumbled as in New Orleans.

Urgent attention will be paid for a few weeks to America’s highway bridges — 15 percent to 25 percent of which are believed to be structurally deficient — because of the collapse in Minneapolis.

But attention ought to be paid in a bigger way to the deficiencies in America’s highways, its electric grid, railways, airports, waterways and urban utilities. They all are clogged, inefficient, a sap on the nation’s productivity and competitiveness — and, in some cases, dangerous.

As part of the New America Foundation’s compelling report “Ten Big Ideas for a New America,” NAF fellow Sherle Schwenninger noted that from 1950 to 1970, the United States devoted 3 percent of its gross domestic product to infrastructure, but since 1980 has spent less than 2 percent.

A percent of GDP amounts to about $140 billion a year in current dollars that the U.S. is not spending to keep its economy growing. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates national infrastructure needs double that — $1.6 trillion over a five-year period.

Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters told me in an interview that only 60 percent of federal highway funds actually are spent on “core” needs — highways and bridges — while 40 percent is devoted to projects such as historic bridges, bike paths and anti-obesity programs to encourage children to walk to school.

In 2005, the ASCE issued a report card on infrastructure that actually gave bridges a C grade, higher than other categories, because from 2000 to 2003, the percentage of the nation’s 590,750 bridges rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete decreased slightly, from 28.5 percent to 27.1 percent.

However, the report said it would cost $9.4 billion a year for 20 years to eliminate all bridge deficiencies. “Long-term underinvestment is compounded by the lack of a federal transportation program,” it said.

Roads received a D grade. “Poor road conditions cost U.S. motorists $54 billion a year in repairs and operating costs, $275 per motorist,” the ASCE said.

“Americans spend 3.5 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, at a cost of $63.2 billion a year to the economy,” while total investment in road construction of $60 billion “is well below the $94 billion needed annually to improve transportation infrastructure conditions nationally.”

The aviation situation got a D-plus because the ASCE judged that “gridlock on America’s runways eased from crisis levels earlier in the decade due to reduced demand and recent modest funding increases.” But tell that to travelers stranded in airports this summer: The worst yet for delays and canceled flights.

The ASCE also declared that “since 1998, the number of unsafe dams has risen by 33 percent to more than 3,500” and that “America faces a shortfall of $11 billion annually to replace aging water facilities and comply with safe drinking standards.”

The Bush administration has consistently shortchanged infrastructure spending. This year, the administration again is threatening a veto because the Democrats’ transportation appropriations bill is $635 million over his request.

The Minneapolis bridge collapse should produce not only a bipartisan agreement to provide emergency aid to rebuild that structure but also an overall reconsideration of transportation funding and deficiencies in all the nation’s infrastructure.

It should not take a catastrophe — Katrina-style flooding, a regional blackout or a tunnel collapse — to convince Republicans to spend and tax as needed and Democrats to say yes to development.

Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.