U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) recently responded to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) report on bridges in the United States.
According to the report, 47,000 bridges nationwide are “structurally deficient,” and it will take more than 80 years to make the necessary repairs. Four out of 10 bridges need to be repaired or replaced, including one out of three interstate bridges.
“Ten years ago, we had a tragedy in Minnesota — the I-35W bridge across the Mississippi River collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring over a hundred,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “I said that day, a bridge just shouldn’t fall down in the middle of America. But what this new report shows us is that another bridge collapse like that could happen any day — and that’s unacceptable. We need to rebuild our infrastructure from the ground up. When we invest in our infrastructure, we invest in opportunity for every American.”
The nation’s structurally deficient bridges average 62 years old, according to the ARTBA report, and are crossed 178 million times daily.
Klobuchar was one of the first Democratic senators to support the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, and is a cosponsor of the Building and Renewing Infrastructure for Development and Growth in Employment (BRIDGE) Act.