State Remains Vigilant On Bridge Maintainence and Replacement BALTIMORE, MD (wypr) - Last year, in the wake of I-35's fall, Governor Martin O'Malley won new bridge rehabilitation funds in last fall's special General Assembly session. Now the governor has joined Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell in urging the U.S. Congress to authorize an extra eight billion dollars to pay for a massive, national bridge rehabilitation program:

The great Abraham Lincoln once said, We cannot . . . evade our responsibility for tomorrow by evading it today.' Well, today we have crumbling infrastructure. Sadly, a year ago all of us watched on the news as the bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, and we wondered, my Goodness, could something like this happen in our community?. . . It does not have to be this way.

Safety isn't the only critical issue. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimates that 90-percent of the trucks that move America's commerce travel along the Interstate Highway system. Testifying last week before Congress, Governor O'Malley told members that the United States is not keeping pace with other countries in investing in its infrastructure.

Let me give you just three numbers: nine, five and less than two: China spends nine-percent of its Gross Domestic Product investing in infrastructure; India, five-percent; our United States of America, less than two percent. We have an obligation to the future, we have an opportunity today, to make these investments which will make us more secure, that will make us stronger in our competitive position with other countries around the globe, and also critically important, they will create jobs.
The governor then told Congress that the investment is a win-win situation.

The bill that is before. . . the Senate today, $8 billion dollars; if there's 47,000 jobs, good-paying jobs, jobs that pay more than a living wage, 47,000 jobs for every billion dollars, this eight billion represents roughly 400.000 jobs, at a time when our economy and the working people of our country desperately need those jobs.

Maryland Transportation Secretary John Porcari said that the state puts all of its extra bridge-building and highway dollars to good use. Porcari said the state maintains

. . . about 2600. Two thousand five hundred and seventy-eight are state owned and maintained bridges. Five percent of those are structurally deficient. I'm pleased to say that, unlike some other states, we have fully funded our Bridge Rehabilitation Program. So, for example, between now and January 2009, we'll have 32 of those bridges either completely replaced or under replacement by January of 2009.

Such an intensive program, Porcari added, is needed because these bridges were built in the years immediately following World War II.

They are Baby Boomer bridges, and like all of us Baby Boomers, they need joint replacements and other things, but I suppose also like all of us, the better you've maintained them over the years, the more life you get out of them. So, we have a very aggressive inspection program, it was rated as excellent' by the Federal Highway Administration, and we use that as the basis for determining what sequence and what the timing is for replacement of those bridges.

Highway bridges are outsized installations, and rebuilding that fifty-year-old inventory will be a colossal investment. But as I-35-W tragedy showed, that investment can only be put off at the risk of more loss of life as well as the loss of America's economic competitive edge.

I'm Garland Thompson, reporting in Baltimore, 88-1, WYPR.


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