The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Bridges

so i think what you just told that ship and then none of like just couple of christians also been so how li li li funding for this program has been provided by the station and other public television stations and by grants from exelon corporation allied chemical corporation and the corporation for public broadcasting on

december fifteenth nineteen sixty seven the silver bridge of point pleasant west virginia collapsed scores of vehicles plunged in a tangle of steel and asphalt wreckage into the winter waters of the ohio river forty six people lost their lives and fabric twenty third nineteen seventy five this alarm bridge near winston salem north carolina fell into the ad can never for motorists were killed on june to our thirteenth nineteen seventy six the third street bridge in bay city michigan collapsed but no one was killed tonight come anymore bridges are in danger of collapse it's b it's

been good evening here is one of those useless fact you come across an element we're looking for something else there are five hundred sixty four thousand bridges in the united states here's another fact one fifth of them a hundred and five thousand are falling down they're obsolete they need to be replaced all over the country aging structures are in danger of collapse from rusty ironwork or decaying concrete the trouble is it would take billions of dollars to fix all these bridges are replacement and nobody wants to put up the money i what has the distinction of leading the nation's statistically enbridge detected thirty nine percent of iowa's bridges are deficient or obsolete according to the federal highways administration many other states shows similar statistics but nowhere is the problem causing more concerned than in allegheny county pittsburgh pennsylvania you run when you talk about bridges you have to talk about the city of bridges pittsburgh are some seventeen under bridges in that city and the surrounding

area allegheny county the reason well the mountainous terrain and the three rivers that run through the area and large at the north end of the city the allegheny ohio and the non good deal as been said that you can drive one mile in any direction from pittsburgh without crossing at least one ridge that sport became known as the city of bridges around the nineteenth century with the help of bridge designer john rowland known the most is the man responsible for new york's brooklyn bridge robling began his pitch for you eight nineteen twenties pittsburgh went through a bridge building well forty three major bridges were built in four years at a cost of twenty four million dollars according to professor steven fernandez of the civil engineering department of carnegie mellon university the rate prices is not new bridges have been repaired rebuilt and replaced for the last forty to fifty years and that says the main change is that the initiative has shifted from the local to the federal level he says it has gotten to the point where the local government looked to the county for funds accounting looks to the state and the state goes to

washington when there's a crisis professor offenders also told us that in the early part of the century bridge isn't that were replaced every thirty years the vast majority of those seventeen under bridges in allegheny carry allegheny county now are at least fifty years old the signs of corrosion in old age aren't readily visible to the general public the warning signals usually can be only be seen from underneath the road bed when you take a visit underneath an old bridges producer ken where they did in pittsburgh last week the lesson can be alarming he talked with car engine off an athletic civil engineer in charge of inspecting all the bridges in the pittsburgh metropolitan area for the pennsylvania department of transportation this is the age of fifty one year old structure use every day it's rated number three on pennsylvania's critical list we asked collins well what's the letter with this bridge large and joe is the matter with is pretty it's generally

overall picture of that it's that word is replace you could see behind me the water coming through that that would start writing about five six hours ago in a concrete so the charity did that that water drains into it and take a long time to dry not of the steal it is their huge eroded a lot a corrosion lot of members broken completely rusted away and all the concrete some structure members like water over the past year we put about a hundred thousand dollars in emergency repairs and his bridge to keep it at the minimum three family members who have had a lot of trouble in the past with large trucks and other vehicles over three time olympian violating and therefore that's why we have six inch clarence signs of rapid each approach that there is a key plot the heavy trucks and prevent the attack a catastrophe from a car at the estimated life without any further repairs would be maybe a year

and we inspect the bridge every six months and during that time if anything we find a naturally would deliberately repairs maintaining announcers of three times and hopefully you know by the time that within a year or so well enough money to replace the structure we're around seventeen hundred bridges in allegheny county which is why i mention the bridges in the world now those bridges for magnifying the problem is the fact that sixty percent of those bridges were built before nineteen thirty five and seventy five percent of the major river crossings were built before nineteen thirty fives a magnifying the number varies we have simply a fact that most them are just suffering from old age there are many reasons a british interior it's a kid probably most important is water and salt salt has a very corrosive effect on steel and concrete numbers and rate accelerates the deterioration of inspection and is bridge over the past year it cost sixty thousand

dollars on their bridges them larger than a seven and fifty thousand three hundred thousand dollars is a very common sight you see the problem is enormous expense related to just discovering what the issue is there are and what you discover when you still have to repair their precinct some type of remedial action the sixty three year old wen got a bridge has been closed since november seventh for major repairs its the second closing in two years everyone agrees that the bridge needs to be replaced with a new record three and a half million dollars and there are no fans so it's been patched together to last another year or so meanwhile local merchants are furious shopping center of a giant department store an effect on our business and has been closed for over three weeks to write one of those years times a year for retail and businesses are store when that gets approximately thirty percent of the customers shopping for them the keys rock jerry

west is the window birds to get sourced or fight these people now have to take along detail the detour which is a tough route from all the roads are to get our schoolwork and the time element makes it such that they would probably rather shop of our competitors the closing of the bridge that natalie has cost tools business has cost jobs in the area we have approximately twenty employees less measured and we employed last year at this time due to the lack of business from the closing of the bridge another war nut rage has a weekly bridge spans the ohio river three years ago a one thousand pound concrete slab fell from a bridge sidewalk so the state remove the sidewalks a new bridge is planned thanks to the lobbying efforts of local residents like jack simpson set at the present time it has a weight limit of three towns speed limit of ten thousand are big

problem with white lima the three towns and speed limits and mao says the fact that so much of our heavy fire from is located on opposite sides of the river and the greater pittsburgh airport we have the snorkel units which we need sometimes it's a widely shared enterprise is great they unveil its authority which is located on the south side of the river have a stripped down some of its ambulances because of the weight limitations on the great slippery valley hospital is located on one side of the river and without this sort of rage which is the vital link between this side of the river and the sport they are still people revere can't get past the important thing about the airport and historically bridges this if there is a disaster for pittsburgh airport historically valley hospital has been designated as the emergency disaster center the personnel office worker valley hospital has been trained to take care of any disaster if the bridge is out and we don't

have a solid lead bridge the ambulances from solidly the train personnel from solidly cannot get to the airport once the they are here they can't return to this country now i asked world without having to go around by about twenty miles lot of people can die in that amount of time and without our bridge without the only link between gospel and therefore we are in serious trouble the decay of pittsburgh's bridges has reached the point that it's become the number one concern while politicians several have been to washington to plead for federal help the pennsylvania department of transportation is broke recently a group a washington officials came to pittsburgh for an inspection one of the guys was allegheny county commissioner robert pierce it's impossible to go anywhere allegheny county without crossing a bridge that is going to be torn down or post they were closed in the next decade and i don't really know anybody can do about it but we've gone to worship then i talk to

people i point out in testimony before congress that if you want to spend as much money in this country on bridges as you do in one lousy nuclear aircraft carrier year you'll solve his problem five years but we put all this money into other things and even from a colleague the fan's standpoint the force and that ever happens in any war you go you've on the other country's bridges well we should use some of the additional money here to take care of our bridges because if we don't you know that the bomber bridges editor for now and that's happening here in allegheny county you see that we see every day and it's a national problem i just affecting us but what's happening in allegheny county gonna happen is happening now nebraska i one in kansas it's got hit the sunbelt states in about ten years and is going to the rest of the country and it is crazy to wait until the bridges for now congressman james howard democrat of new jersey is the chairman of the house subcommittee on surface transportation is also the author of the howard plan which calls for billions of dollars to repair and replace the nation's crumbling bridges

congressman first of all how great is the problem in your view the problem is just as grave as though what we have just seen itself all over the country particularly in the older states we have as we said a hundred and five thousand unsafe bridges either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete are getting worse every day and so thus far the federal government has made a beautiful gesture in our bridge program totally inadequate amount of money in this has to be changed in this congress i believe it will firfer and members of the public using bridges all over the country now to know whether the bridge is the driving over are actually safer their cars and they don't very often and that's that's the crime of it we've had a very difficult time we finally got enough bridge inspection where on most of the bridges we do have proper weight limits but bridges had been deteriorating for years but hasn't been stated we don't really see it going over bridges been repainted it looks looks pretty good but we do know that we have an average of a bridge collapsed on the average of one every two days in the

nation last full year we had figures for about two years ago the world hundred and seventy six bridge collapsed most of those being fairly small was more loss of life in rural bridges yes we're very heavy cement truck or something would go over but we certainly do have some of our major bridges as we saw in allegheny county that that are in need and we're spending now under eighty million dollars a year federally i'm a seventy five twenty five match well at that rate is going to take us over a hundred years just to fix the bridges that need it now so we need a great a nominee doesn't come to that moment were just on the question of ordinary safety if if that the cambridge is limited to the way to compare like the one we just saw in that in that report does that mean if the big trucks don't go across it when a motorist can consider himself safely as the engineering so sophisticated that a weight limit really makes it safer now because we've seen the bridges are that have been checked in had been inspected that have collapsed at times with a great number of cars you know you can have as we saw on that point pleasant disaster

was of a car they were bumper to bumper packed up and so you have that extra mile away in the north we had a deterioration of the sort we put on the bridge's it's a continuing thing and so i do have a bridge up being inspected at one time and it's where for a certain time each well as time goes by that gets worse and worse of it does have the last safe reporting we know that is not quite as good as the last report we had say i'm not your plan the howard plan could you tell us briefly what well our plan is it is a it is a big legislative raul surface transportation mass transportation highways highway improvement and bridges and bridges is one part of what we're doing i think is making a change in direction and in surface transportation in this country for the first time since the invention of the automobile where we're moving away from expanding building roads new bridges and we have to look at the system we have now on the howard plan would put more of an emphasis on modernizing and making safer and more efficient the highway system that we have today and that means more in the nature of repair or replacement upgrading widening

to allies in such things do you want to dedicate some portion of the highway trust fund the money that is raised from the federal gasoline tax is to this purpose oh absolutely its part of a highway program has been a user taxes been used since nineteen fifty six we year since nineteen fifty nine and four cents a gallon in the federal highway trust fund we've got no more per gallon since that time the bridge program alone i feel we need to do two things with that we have to raise the money money for modern eighty million a year to two billion a year and i think in order to have the states able to work with the program my bill calls for change in the federal state match from seventy five federal twenty five state to ninety ten so that the states will be able to use this great amount of money and those are two major things of course that's going to take additional money to the tone of having additional income into the highway trust fund which means fire for gospel which means an increase in the federal gas tax we can do everything we want to do and i think need to do over the coming decade at least with a two cent a

gallon increase on the federal level i think the then in the spring with are built when it'll come out i believe that we'll be able to get that amount of money dedicated for that purpose the highway improvements and the bridge program and other safety measures for years the agency of the federal government responsible for the nation's roadways and bridges is the federal highways administration and william cox heads that agency that because what is your assessment of how serious the bridge problem is nationally i definitely is a serious problem i can even though it in terms of the hundred and five thousand deficient bridges that we have our system the vast majority of them or some seventy two thousand of the bridges are not on the federal aid system of the thirty three thousand five hundred dead on the federal aid system we have i believe anyway a definite federal commitment to help resolve the problem resolve a problem now i think it's going to have be approached from

two areas forced the rehabilitation of existing structures that are functionally obsolete but not structurally deficient and replacement of those bridges that are structurally deficient five now let's talk about money i was this can cost a lot of money as the congressman said i think of what is a hundred and five laura hundred million dollars is being used in that now it says it's going to take two billion dollars a year and do you agree with that well i think that the themes basically on the timetable that we try to operate under we've gone in this country are in some seven years that we've had a great replacement program a special breed replacement program we've gone from a fun and lola nineteen seventy four twenty five million dollars to have the sheer hundred and eighty million dollars i think that we need to remember that the total cost to replace all the bridges that are currently been a fed is being

deficient bridges somewhere an area where one hundred million dollars if we're going to build back to their disease or if we build back up to archive his and standards were talking twenty five billion dollars in terms of all of the sheer safety and all that sort of thing that we really have any choice a minimal it sounds like a lot of money one of the options was but this was one of the options to not rebuilding these bridges to the point when they should be like there was pointed at them well that the region's because comics in their prom sweethearts comics comes from iron more than any other member of congress is labor fight to address this problem and address it now i don't think we have any choice however some of the practicalities and love you can't do then and the replacement bridge is or you can qualify for all of the necessary never will screen permit such as fool for permit he can't complete the environmental

impact statement you can go to construction simply because i'm it is a viable and now our preliminary winners are red tape while the vote for yes it can call it red tape i'm not sure that the red tape is my not will be a misnomer in this particular is a group called the lockout a great deal and then it takes a while to reach the board we can build a construction on on the bridge what happens in the meantime i don't understand that i'm you know that there's a brit suspended like that at one of the number of bridges that were lower in the phone from allegheny county we are very sure ej just the fact that they're very serious shape not immediately qualify them for some emergency help or something like that or is there a procedural thing even than with him and working with the national rate inspection program which was authorized and congress back congress in

nineteen sixty eight we set out to conduct raids in inventory on the federal aid system we've identified two hundred and thirty four thousand bridges of which we have about thirty three thousand five hundred that have been designated as either functionally obsolete are structurally deficient so why we've now gone back and work with the states in shoring up those previous npr funding levels and are our procedural requirements can be met solely to breed can be replaced there is no question that we're going to have to have more money are somehow a vacuous her when you say two billion dollars what you think in the real world a world of politics in congress would you think realistically the chances are getting to be a naughty year i think that the chances are quite good i believe the day and we come out of this bill and held hearings i

haven't had one person yet as say well we just have to go much slower on this when we can work out our problems in funding that were working on in connection with highways for mass transportation i believe that we can get up to about two cents a gallon for a program that we come out with two billionaire for bridges and close to another billion dollars for the repair or replacement in upgrading of the non interstate which has been the primary secondary road system has been ignored i do agree very much with that with bill cox as to the red tape from a caliper says a drill well for people right to make all of red tape that's true now i think that the wilcox now is responsible for those are thirty three thousand five hundred bridges on the federal aid system not quite as responsible for the seventy two thousand smaller lesser bridges or system that your interpreter i certainly want to include them in the same proportion however i think that it might be much better and i know like bill compton and much happier and be more efficient if we have some way of funding to the states so that they can on their

own take your these waltzes and bridges without having the federal highway administration bill cox being forced to sign off individually and every one of these bridges because some of these are very small old bridges very short of bridges and it might take you more money for some of the federal additional red tape or than it would to replace the bridge itself so i think that we we ought to consider the mall we have that the drivers and it's the rural bridges neural system bridges that very often cause drivers to write several miles out of their way more so than the big city bruges and that waste a lot of time and an awful lot of fuel allegheny county alone in pennsylvania just on their public facilities their buses they spend an additional three quarters of a million dollars every year in additional costs or for fuel because they have to write their buses down streams to save for bridges so when you think of the automobiles involved in that extra travel we could do a great deal toward meeting our energy in and fuel wasting problems by having deficient bridges where the roads have them today let me ask you mr cox as this message of the

bridge problem iron and all the of the other reasons of the current cartoonist lay out has that message gotten through the thing to the administration in a survey that we conducted since i've come to the federal highway administration we've come up with a figure of somewhere around four hundred and fifty to five hundred million dollars i work and bridge projects that could go to construction next year where the federal funds available and i would hope that congressman hired would agree that in the creative than that i've been a federal highway administration has a four years ago i think that we have with a little more speed than we have to go wrong another night tomorrow night when we will have an interview by satellite from south africa we saw the african prime minister and foerster

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