Another Bridge Down
The latest CBS report on the I-5 bridge collapse over the Skagit River north of Seattle, Washington indicated that they are blaming it on an over-sized load hitting a support girder.
Of course it couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the bridge was part of the initial Interstate system and was built during Eisenhower’s first term in 1955, and no doubt modeled with an Erector Set [a common practice at the time].
Since the Reagan administration all of the highway money has been spent on new roads, many of them unneeded, and less and less on routine maintenance. That bridge should have been replaced years ago with a more modern design, without the girders and with wider shoulders, but fixing things doesn’t generate the campaign money that new roads do.
People need work, and those with money are willing to pay the Treasury to hold it, so we should be fixing our decaying infrastructure, but we can’t do it. The reason we can’t do seem to boil down to Paul Krugman is shrill and J.M. Keynes was ‘Teh Gay’, so anything that looks and acts as an economic stimulus is totally unacceptable to the Village.
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And yet *ANOTHER* bridge down. This one because a train derailed and took out its supports. Our rail infrastructure is, alas, as decrepit as our road infrastructure, but nobody really notices because thanks to the demise of passenger rail the only people who see it are employees of railroad companies who are sworn to silence upon penalty of firing.
We once had Amtrak service in our area, but it was never restarted after Katrina because the roadbed and bridges weren’t repaired to passenger standards. My Mother went to California on it and enjoyed more than flying. It was roomy and comfortable, even the food wasn’t that bad, and you got to see the country.
The current rail system is what you get when there is no regulation. Instead of improving their infrastructure, they milk every dollar out of the system as they consider accidents just part of the cost of doing business.