US officials have ordered a review of all bridges similar to the collapsed Minnesoat bridge. 1/4 of all U.S. bridges are rated as structurally deficient according to a DOT study. The BBC reports that over 700 structures will looked at.
More than 700 structures will be looked at after it emerged that the bridge in Minneapolis had been classified as "structurally deficient".
Divers have resumed their search for victims in the Mississippi river. At least eight people are still missing.
First Lady Laura Bush is set to visit Minneapolis and will go to the scene.
Unfortnately, there isn't enough money to fund the much needed bridge corrections. MSNBC.com reports that the Federal Highway Trust Fund will run completely dry in 2009. The article also lists the following problems with U.S. bridges.
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."
Funding for highway projects like fixing bridges has suffered from budget shortfalls over recent years.
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."
We can't have bridges that are too dangerous to cross so something will have to be done to fund all these bridge repairs. You can see an interactive map showing the structurally insufficient bridges state by state here.
