Sep 20

Written by: Russ Henke
9/20/2008 6:27 AM 

As our country drowns in its most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression, it’s easy to forget the dozens of other ills from which the nation is suffering, all brought on by government and corporate greed, incompetence, and deregulation, or a combination of all three.

Our crumbling infrastructure of dams, highways and bridges is one of those illnesses written about in previous blog entries in this space. For example, see the August 4, 2008 blog entry entitled, “Interstate 35-W Bridge Collapse -- One Year Later.”

However, one bright spot occurred this week in this sea of darkness. The new Interstate 35W bridge is finally open in Minneapolis, thirteen and a half months after the last one collapsed into the Mississippi River. Lest we forget, the August 1, 2007 bridge collapse killed 13 people and injured 145.

On September 18, 2008, hundreds of vehicles lined up on both sides, some waiting hours for the new bridge to open a few minutes after 5:00 AM CDT. Then they inched, bumper to bumper, onto the new $234 million, 10-lane span.

The new bridge also contains hundreds of modern sensors that will provide data designed to keep small problems from becoming big ones. Sensors and cameras will feed data about traffic speeds, accidents and other activity to computers at the University of Minnesota.

The National Transportation Safety Board will finally hold a hearing in November 2008 to discuss its ultimate determination of what caused the original 40-year-old bridge to collapse. Officials have focused on errors in the original design and the weight of 2007 construction materials, rather than general greed, governmental incompetence and chronic infrastructure neglect.

Why then is this news of rebuilding and reopening the 35W Bridge a “bright spot”? Because the bridge was opened three months earlier than predicted! Because it shows what can be done by “can-do” people who focus 24/7 effort and money on an important and worthwhile priority! Just think how much infrastructure improvement (and new U.S. jobs) could be created across this great country by a nationwide WPA-like commitment!

Of course, we’ll first need to figure out how to recover simultaneously from the accumulated trillions in national debt (that’s trillions with a “t” folks!) wasted over the last thirty-plus years, and the additional trillions it’ll now take to bail out Wall Street.