While I was fruitlessly feeding a Troll (Sorry) trying to make the point that infrastructure projects such as fixing our the crumbling bridges in America would create jobs, just as much if not more than the claim of jobs from the pathetic Keystone XL Pipeline, JOHNT001 suggested that there should be a caption contest for the photo above. Taking his suggestion, this is the bridge over the Mississippi River that collapsed August 1, 2007, in Minneapolis Minnesota. JOHNT001’s caption was “Your tax cuts, at work!” We can also play, “Guess which Troll”, if you are so inclined. (Hint: Despite 13 dead and 145 injured, he called my concerns about bridges “Silly”!)
Link to ABC News
Please share widely!
Sorry, Mike, but this collapse was caused by bad engineering when the bridge was designed. It had nothing to do with tax cuts.
In that regard, it has more to do with other catastrophic failures like this:
Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse
We have a HUGE number of crumbling bridges to fix. For example, here is what the underside of the Longfellow bridge looked like in 2008 (and its repair is just now getting underway):
Longfellow Bridge, 2008
I am, frankly, more concerned that the delusional “austerity” narrative is creating more problems like this for the future by dismantling our already understaffed and under-funded oversight agencies. We invested something like twelve billion dollars in the now-leaking Big Dig, we’ve already had one fatality caused by fraudulently corrupt contractors, and we have demonstrated no effective ability to prosecute and punish the criminal conspirators who did such shoddy work.
When we slash government spending even more, and yield even more power to well-funded corporations, is it reasonable to expect the quality of our new infrastructure work to improve? I think not.
Is that the American people overwhelmingly support, including a majority of Republicans, creating jobs via infrastructure projects. Its a no brainer and has been a sound economic policy since Roman times. We can thank public works projects for the Roman road and aqueduct, we can thank Napoleon IIIs projects for making modern Paris with its wide boulevards, and we can thank FDR for a host of great WPA projects from the Fresh Pond Golf Course in my hometown to Soldier Field in my current one. Its a simple idea, since day 1 of this presidency back in 2009 people have wanted Jobs, and dumbass/spineless Dems and frankly evil Republicans who want our economy to tank (and have demonstrated this time and time again by holding our eocnomy hostage) have prevented that. We also have a President who frankly lacked a governing vision to guide him to this simple solution. So yeah we need it.
Luckily our governor recognizes that in Massachusetts. And thank God, I used to sail under that thing and was always worried it’d fall on me.
Why is bad engineering somehow a ‘get out of jail’ card for crumbling infrastructure? When designing, building, inspecting, maintaining and repairing any infrastructure the first thing you do is hire an engineer and the more money you spend the better the engineering is likely to be throughout the entire spectrum of designing, building, inspecting maintaining and repairing…
According to various sources like Wikipedia, the bridge was designed in the mid 1960s and opened in 1967. It was built during a period when Minnesota was expanding its infrastructure. Specifically, any engineering flaws were not due to tax cuts.
While it’s true that tax cuts cause infrastructure problems, I don’t believe the I-35 bridge collapse is an example.
I actually think we’re in violent agreement. I wrote “When we slash government spending even more, and yield even more power to well-funded corporations, is it reasonable to expect the quality of our new infrastructure work to improve? I think not”, I was attempting to express the same premise that you articulate in your last sentence.
not about the bridge’s merits when built. Rather, it’s that having a larger infrastructure budget NOW might have made it possible to detect and repair the bridge.
There were certainly problems with the bridge, and they had been noted.
Sadly, our nation’s infrastructure is in such bad condition that it would have taken a staggering increase in funding to get to this bridge — as unbelievable as it may seem, there are many bridges in far worse condition. As far as I can discern, this bridge was designed in conformance with the engineering standards of the time. I’m a EE, not a structural or civil engineer, but I think the principles are the same — the best we can expect for a design is to conform to standards of its time. I don’t think we can expect even a well-funded government to replace every old structure when we upgrade standards based on new information — if nothing else, that would be a significant disincentive for learning new things.
Having said that, bridges typically have 50 year lifetime and virtually all the first-generation interstate highway bridges are due for replacement.
I agree with both you and petr that we need a significantly larger infrastructure budget. My only point here is that there are a host of bridges in worse condition than the one that failed (try exploring here), and I suggest that those are better examples for us to use in making our case.