Interstate 35 Bridge Collapse

The city of Minneapolis is still in shock from the collapse of the I-35 bridge during rush hour Wednesday. A local landmark spanning the Mississippi River, albeit a dreary concrete one, has been erased from the skyline, and an unknown number of people are dead. This morning, as I sat at the Mayday Cafe there was a sense of foreboding as the regulars talked about the collapse, and about the rumors, leaked by reporters desperate for new macabre angles, of cars filled with people and water at the bottom of the river. People are shocked, fittingly for Midwesterners, as much by the attention our city is receiving as by the disaster itself. We were, after all, on CNN. But, equally as appalling as cable news, is the fact that this happened here. Minnesota, a state with a long history of progressive social policies, has long been at the top of heap as far as our standard of living. You'd think that this wouldn't be happening in one of the wealthiest states in the richest country in the world. Maybe this is why we're on CNN.

As numerous commentators have pointed out, the American infrastructure is rapidly deteriorating. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the condition of our infrastructure a grade of D in 2005 and estimated that it would take $1.6 trillion to bring it up to good condition, in other words a B grade. People have also been pointing out that the only other $1 trillion we ever hear is in reference to the amount the government has spent on the Iraq War. The tragedies are just piling up.

Rather than taking the obvious route and connecting this to the War on Terror (which, in my opinion, will be remembered as a human-rights travesty and black mark on American history long after Cheney installs his brain in a bowl), or the even more obvious route and calling for $1.6 trillion in spending on roads, maybe we should be wondering why our public infrastructure is so focused on an unsustainable, time-wasting, environmentally destructive 1960's car culture? And questioning why we would want to merely rebuild it when it's this very car culture that's gotten us into so many problems in the last half decade?

Americans spend an unholy amount of time in cars, 24 minute daily commutes on average which adds up to about 148 hours per year. The repercussions on commuter health such as obesity and hypertension are already well documented, as is the elevated rates of asthma in inner city populations that act as the spoke of suburban commuting. Is that worth not having to walk two blocks to the corner store?

And ever since Al Gore Jr. snorted that pocketful of coke and roared down the highway we, the American public, have realized what a big deal the environment is. 1/3 of CO2 is produced by cars, not to mention all sorts of other toxic chemicals that than enter our bodies and ecosystems. Add to this the environmental implications of building so many damn roads, and car manufacturers fixated on profit through planned obsolescence, rather than functionality and economy. There's 68 million of these beasts sitting around, after all.

If we wanted to be crass we could also talk about the economic price that we pay in order to just barely maintain these roads. This is money that could be going to schools, social services, or your pocket (or, let's be honest about what these assholes would really do with it, the war in Iraq). Hell, maybe we can finally even have the 20 hour work week! Add the billions of dollars spent on road maintenance to the billions spent on gas to the billions spent on health, and oh what a woeful state we are in. Benjamin Franklin would kick our ass. And we shouldn't fool ourselves that the taxes paid for these improvements are provided by the freight companies or corporations who are tearing up the highways with their semi's. In Minnesota the amount of taxes paid by corporations dropped 44% between 1998 and 2003. The tax burden, thanks to that weasel Pawlenty, is being borne by working people. Does it really make sense in the face of environmental catastrophe, to spend trillions of our dollars on renovating an antiqued system that will only make us more dependent on oil and cars? It's the 21st century! Where's my hover-board?

Would shifting our priority from widening clogged highways to creating livable local communities really prevent bridges from collapsing? Probably not. But using the money more wisely, to restrict dependence on automobiles, and in turn all their negative repercussions, could make these disasters more rare. In the same way that the highway boom of the 1960's led to the creation of distant suburbs and lengthy commutes, changing the infrastructure to reflect more sustainable transportation would transform our lifestyles. All in all, I'm not overly optimistic that Americans, and especially American politicians, will take any steps in this direction until its far too late and we've already voted Mad Max as President, but it seems an inescapable debate in the face of liberal calls for trillions to be spent on road infrastructure, and in the inescapable tragedy of these ghostly images of Minnesotans, trapped in their cars at the bottom of the Mississippi.