I-35 Bridge Collapse: New Orleans II Conservative Economics in Action.

I blame it all on that loser FDR and that goofus Eisenhower... how dare they use our tax money to build bridges that are either too narrow or won't last over 100 years.

 

Pathetic even for you, glynch. Sad, really.


OFF THE RESERVATION

 

Who needs to worry about future generations when we can have all the money in the WWWOOORRRLLLLDDD!

 

glynch, if you are going to plagiarize from dailykos, at least let us know... pathetic.

http://www.dailykos.com/

As the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card 2005 points out, we're $1.6 trillion behind in infrastructure investment. That, by the way, is the amount of tax cuts Mister Bush tried to get passed in 2001, before he had the Global War on Terrorism™ with which to shape his legacy. Congress "compromised" and gave him only $1.35 trillion, tax cuts that writer Robert Freeman once labeled a "national form of insanity."

I can't believe some liberals actually defend the dailykos website. Politicians are heading to this yearlykos event in the coming days, almost legitimizing this over-the-top lunatic fringe website of hate.

 

The last time the state gas tax was raised in Texas was in 1991. Under state law, the state highway system was supposed to be built and maintained with the state gas tax, as well as Federal highway money. Considering that Texas gets back about 87 cents for every Federal tax dollar sent to Washington, I've always thought using available Federal highway funding made perfect sense. By the late 1980's, Texas had one of the finest highway systems in the world. She had more miles of paved farm to market roads than any other country in the world.

However, since that 5 cent gas tax increase in 1991, the Legislature has refused to raise it to keep up with inflation and population growth. There have been times when we have had to turn down Federal matching funds simply because we hadn't come up with state matching funds. No wonder that we see the Texas highway system falling apart. There are countless bridges in this state that aren't getting repairs and/or replacement due to the lack of state funding. (the same is true of dams, and a host of other infrastructure crumbling due to the state government of the last several years not only refusing to raise revenue, but getting a manianical glee from cutting taxes, as the state's population skyrockets, and the cost of everything continues to rise) Perry's answer? Sell needed Texas highways to foreign companies and let them collect tolls from Texans, for decades, instead of "paying as we go," by raising revenue. 16 years later, we have yet to raise our gasoline tax.

Does the Texas situation compare to the national crisis of our crumbling infrastructure? Should we fear a similar catastrophe in our own beloved state? Of course.



D&D. Impeach Bush and Cheney.

 

Experts: Leadership, money keys to building bridges

 

This is not a new issue. I remember hearing the same issues with ignoring infrastructure in the 1980's and through the 1990's. I vaguely remember something about a bridge collapse in Pennsylvania.

Usually what happens is something like this happens and things get marginally better until people forget. For whatever reason, maintenance isn't a 'sexy' political cause.

It is a problem, but I think there are so many other more heinous things to blame on Bush. He hasn't fixed the problem, but he did inherit it.

 

People would rather have crumbling infrastructure than higher taxes. That is the reality of democracy. Put a road tax ballot measure on the polls in any state and it will fail most of the time.

 

It's scary there are people out there like you who are mind-numbingly idiotic. This glynch is trying to tell you that the government is SCAMMING you, the guy next to you, and everyone else in the American public with ridiculous tax breaks for the rich and more taxes on the middle class, to pay for what?? 1 trillion dollar defense budgets??? It amazes me that there are so many fools out there like yourself who will cut their own throats for what, what on EARTH do these slimeballs you support provide you with the taxes you pay? Inside deals for companies like Halliburton? Wait, you MUST work for one of thess companies, right? Why else would you defend people who only seek to SCREW you???

We should get something for our taxes you know, like decent roads, decent health care, etc., but we dont' because we have too many people like you who impede such rational progress by keeping this utter slime in office.

OH wait, I forgot to add, apparently 1 trillion aint enough to defeat the 2 POOREST countries on earth - Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

These are old issues- In 1987 there was a campaign by American Society of Civil Engineers- apolitical in my opinion to "Rebuild America's infrastructure with American materials and Labor"-this was a rallying theme in national construction circles at the time. Many in construction industry budgeting take a glacial approach to paying for major infrastructure- minute capital improvements over a long period to make it digestible.

To some degree - this is already happening- small improvements over a long period- to minimize damage rather than do substantive fixing.

It is so hard to sell a 500 million dollar bridge to the public-so quick to suspect pork barrel motives

The media is having a feeding frenzy over this accident- occurence.

When something this large just collapses - it is such a shock that it could happen that it takes time for political solutions to get into gear.

I hate the polemics

 

You lost him right there. These are subjects Jorge knows nothing about. and he's proven it time and again in this BBS.

 

I'm glad Glynch started this thread as since I'm back to rookiedom I haven't been able to start a new thread on this very subject.

We've known for years that our infrastructure is failing and its sad that it takes something like this to wake up most of the country to this threat. There was nothing exceptional about the 35W bridge prior to its collapse and its condition was no different than thousands of bridges around the country. At the risk of being alarmist this could happen anywhere in the US. Infrastructure is deteriorating and the funding isn't there.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20095291/

"U.S. highway system badly in need of repair
Thousands of bridges need rebuilding, but funding hasn't kept up

By John W. Schoen
Senior Producer
MSNBC
Updated: 10:40 p.m. CT Aug 2, 2007

The U.S. highway system is broken. And it’s not clear where the money is going to come from to fix it.

Amid a steady rise in congestion and ongoing deterioration of decades-old roads and bridges, federal and state funding is failing to keep up with the need to maintain existing infrastructure and increase capacity. And the cash shortfall is only going to get worse, with the Federal Highway Trust Fund — supported by a tax on gasoline — projected to run dry in 2009.

Part of the problem stems from the increase in traffic borne by a national highway system that is 50 years old in places. In 1955, the system carried 65 million cars and trucks. Today, that number has nearly quadrupled to 246 million, according to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

That added stress is taking a toll — in both increased congestion and deterioration of roads and bridges. The list of projects in need of repair is extensive, according to TRIP, a national transportation research group:

33 percent of the nation's major roads are in “poor or mediocre condition.”
36 percent of major urban highways are congested.
26 percent of bridges are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.”
Over 2,000 bridges on the interstate highway system are in need of an overhaul, according to Frank Moretti, TRIP's director of research.

It's not clear just how many of those bridges are unsafe. According to the Federal Highway Administration, most bridges in the U.S. Highway Bridge Inventory — 83 percent — are inspected every two years. About 12 percent, those in bad shape, are inspected annually, and 5 percent, those in very good shape, every four years.

The Department of Transportation’s inspector general last year criticized the Highway Administration’s oversight of interstate bridges, saying that flawed calculations of weight limits could pose safety hazards. The Highway Administration agreed its oversight of state bridge inspections needed to be improved.

Several governors on Wednesday ordered state transportation officials to inspect particular bridges or review their inspection procedures.

It's also not clear just how much all this repair will cost, but some estimates put the price tag in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

“If you do not take care of what is needed to maintain the condition and performance of an asset, you start creating a backlog of maintenance and capital improvement that needs to be met,” said Janet Kavinoky, a transportation lobbyist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “We are amassing — and have amassed — a huge backlog when it comes to our infrastructure.”

One reason for the backlog is that funding for highway repair and improvements hasn’t kept up with rising construction and maintenance costs, which have far outstripped the overall inflation rate. The biggest reason: strong global demand for building materials like steel and concrete have pushed up prices of those raw materials. Higher oil prices have raised the cost of asphalt and the diesel fuel need to power road-building equipment.

Meanwhile, funding for improvements and maintenance continues to fall short. When Congress last passed a major highway funding bill in 2005, the Federal Highway Administration estimated it needed $375 billion to fund repair and improvement projects, but the final bill authorized just $286 billion.

On Thursday, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, said that the nation’s transportation infrastructure has been underfunded for years and that the Bush administration has threatened to veto proposals to increase funding.

“We want to get the bills done and want to get them increased at a sufficient amount,” he said. “We spend over $3 billion a week on the war. So there is a lot of money that is being spent in other places that we have to recover and put into our highways. Because we face immediate danger in lots of places, and the public deserves better than that.”

Congressional leaders say the number of bridges in need of repair is too high and the funding too low.

"There is crumbling infrastructure all over the country," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who heads the Senate panel that controls transportation spending, said the Bush administration has threatened vetoes when Democrats try to increase such spending.

White House deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel declined to address spending and accused the Democrats of using the Minneapolis bridge collapse for partisan purposes.

Apart from the threat to public safety, crumbling roadways and bridges are taking a toll on the nation's economy. About three-quarters of the $8.4 trillion worth of commodities delivered each year nationwide is carried by trucks; delays in that supply chain reduce the productivity of American businesses. At the same time motorists spend 3.7 billion hours a year stuck in traffic at a cost of $63 billion in wasted time and fuel costs, according to TRIP. (My own comment: For all of those complaining about taxes hurting our economy crumbling infrastructure is hurting our economy.)

Funding for road building and repair is also being squeezed by the shrinking Highway Trust Fund, which gets most of its revenues from a federal tax on gasoline and diesel fuel. When first established in 1956, the 3-cent-a-gallon tax represented about 10 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline.

The current tax, which hasn’t been raised a since 1993, is 18.4 cents a gallon, about 6 percent of the pump price. Two years ago, Congress proposed raising the tax by 4 cents a gallon, but the measure died when the White House threatened to veto any highway spending bill that included a tax increase.

As recently as 2000, the highway trust fund had a balance of nearly $23 billion. By last year, that had shrunk to $6 billion. By 2009, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the fund will come up short by $1.7 billion, and the deficit will rise to $8.1 billion by 2010.

Funding at the state level also has failed to keep up with the increased cost of repair and new construction. Though federal highways are financed in large part by the federal government, additional funding comes from state and local governments. Traditionally, state governments have raised those funds with “user fees” such as auto registration fees and state gasoline taxes, according to Moretti of TRIP.

“In the last decade those increases dramatically decreased,” he said. “Many legislators decided to oppose any increase in taxation, and they lumped user fees in with general taxes.”

Since most state gasoline taxes are levied based on volume, not price, revenues have not increased even as the price of gasoline has risen sharply. As high pump prices promote conservation, lower sales volumes of gasoline mean even less money to support road repair.

With public funds drying up, some states have turned to private investors to maintain existing highways and build new ones. Faced with a $1.8 billion shortfall for road improvements, Indiana last year signed a $3.85 billion, 75-year lease with private investors to maintain the state turnpike and collect tolls. Two years ago, the city of Chicago signed a $1.83 billion lease to privatize its Skyway commuter bridge. Texas signed $5 billion deal with a private firm to to overhaul State Highway 121, which runs through the congested Dallas-Fort Worth region.

In New Jersey, lawmakers are debating a proposal to sell a 49 percent stake in the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway. New York Gov. George Pataki is proposing that private investors be given the task of rebuilding or replacing the aging Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson River.

Critics of these deals say they’ve been overly generous to the for-profit companies involved. In April, the Texas Legislature passed a two-year moratorium on privatizing roads in response to public criticism of the deals.

In any case, privatization can only work for the relatively few, high-traffic projects that can turn a profit.

“It’s not the answer for connecting Wyoming with Chicago and funding a nationwide network,” said Kavinoky of the Chamber of Commerce. “Privatization is project financing. It’s not systemic funding.”

 

Sometimes, its not only the funding that's the problem. Here is Boston, no long ago the Big Dig tunnel collapsed and killed a women driving through it. glynch's solution would have been raise taxes and throw more money at it. Except the Big Dig's orginal price tag was suppose to be 3 billion, the tab is now at 15 billion and we are still paying for it. Incompetent management, not funding was the source of the problem.

People here just love to pin anything to Bush and the Reps. I am sure all the bridges were in perfect shape when Clinton was in office, and started going bad as soon as the Bush tax cuts happened.

 

The tax cuts were across all income ranges, so the middle class is paying less taxes than before the cut. Do you just pull these stuff out of your a$$?

 

And with skyrocketing energy and healthcare costs, the middle class ends up losing money, tax cut or no tax cut. Where do you pull your stuff out of?

 

What all of you simpletons fail to recognize is that the tax cuts actually INCREASED tax revenues. The government has more money, not less.

HO HO HO!

How does that little bit of knowledge hit you? Oh well, forget about it and start a new thread on your Bush hatred. Perhaps you could blame him for the drive-through line at Starbucks being too long today?

 

Actually, there's more to that than you want to admit. Because of the National government's insatiable desire for control and that darn Constitution getting in the way, our highway funding system is a bizarre, convoluted mess. Federal matching funds to the states are granted at a much higher rate for construction of roads than maintenance of those roads. If a state wants to build a highway that it can't afford to maintain, the Federal government will open it's pocketbook and shower matching funds on it. All it takes is a brief drive around Louisiana to see where this will take you.

According to a report I heard on the radio this morning from the ASCE, Texas has one of the best-maintained and safest road systems in the country. I personally agree that gasoline should be taxed on a dollar basis instead of a volume basis, but so far, Texas has had enough revenue for what it really needs. (We don't really need the North American Union Expressway.)