I don’t think people are fully grasping how much of a nightmare the bridge collapse in Pittsburgh is. The collapse of a heavily-traveled bridge that was suspended over a heavily-traversed trail is already horrifying enough, but it is not just about this particular bridge – or just the collapse of it. Pittsburgh has (or had) 456 bridges, more than any other city in the world, surpassing even Venice, Italy. This bridge had been on the radar for years. It was marked as “poor” quality as early as 2011.
And over 3 years ago, it got reported that the rust on the support beams got so bad it completely broke in half.
This bridge is not the only one in this condition in the city.
Over 100 of the 400+ bridges are in poor condition, the numbers get even worse if you expand to the entire county, and beyond. Pittsburgh notoriously was featured in a 2015 Last Week Tonight special on infrastructure, due to the frightening response to crumbling bridges: just put another bridge under it to catch the debris.
For a problem that has been on the radar for some time, the solutions have been underwhelming, and portions of the funding have even been rerouted to the state police. Pittsburgh, like many cities, has a bloated police fund while infrastructure is left as one of the last things funded. The police in 2020 took up 20% of the entire city operating budget.
It was amusing that Biden, who loves to visit Pittsburgh to bolster his image as a man of the industrial working class, was somehow surprised to learn that there were so many bridges in the city.
In fact, infrastructure was a major talking point of 2016 presidential candidates visiting the city. And now, in 2022 they are beginning to respond. I would love to believe that the Infrastructure Bill will do the things that they promise, but between Biden’s lovely-sounding unfulfilled promises and the amount of time these issues have gone without response I have limited hope in this magic bill.
In particular, the labor needed to respond to this crisis is effectively nonexistent. City road workers, particularly snow plow drivers, have been pushing for better treatment for years. At this point, there is a massive labor shortage in plowing, and WORKER WAGE funding has been lacking. The minimum wage in PA is still $7.25.
And this bridge has been nowhere near the only recent crisis Pittsburgh has seen. It’s only been two years since this:
a sinkhole opened in the cultural district downtown and swallowed up an entire bus. Bridges have caught fire, a portion of a major road in the city crumbled and sloughed off down the mountain, and locals are familiar with how frequently the city floods.
The most notorious flooding of Pittsburgh is a frequent occurrence that is referred to as “The Bathtub.”
This entire underpass floods so severely it is impossible for vehicles to go through, and at this point, flooding occurs yearly. Well-known massive issues in infrastructure have been public knowledge for so long, were the supposed subject of political campaign strategies, but solutions have been absent.
So it’s all well and fine that this bill will “fix” everything, I genuinely hope it does some actual good, but nothing *has* been fixed before, and it’s just getting worse. Pittsburgh’s story is not unique. Every city faces horrible circumstances like this. Funding gets stolen, workers don’t see any of the money, and with a labor shortage caused by the death of nearly a million Americans from COVID, any plan that doesn’t include some intense overhaul of how labor is treated and compensated, nothing will be fixed.
