Earlier this morning, it was announced that a bridge had collapsed in Pittsburgh.
And I'm sure by now you've probably seen the photos.
It is absolutely horrendous to see five vehicles
and port authority bus for Allegheny County were both
on the overpass when it collapsed in the
Frick Park below the bridge at around 6:40 a.m.
That bridge was last inspected in September according to Mayor Ed Gainey.
And we know previously as we'll show the evidence
for, that it was in horrendous condition at that point.
Perhaps they were planning some sort of renovations,
but despite the fact that it was inspected
several months ago, that didn't happen and we
came very close to people losing their lives.
Thankfully, at this point, so far, it doesn't seem to have been the case,
although 10 people did suffer minor injuries
and four people were taken to area hospitals.
It doesn't believe that any of their
injuries at that point are life threatening.
But, vehicles were destroyed, rubble, rained down, gas lines were ruptured.
And so sort of a big issue.
For just one second, let's jump to this photo
because this is a tweet from back in 2018.
So, several years prior to that inspection that was just alluded
to, Dr. Kochanski here showed a photo from underneath that bridge.
And you can see a huge amount of rust as well as looks
like steel beams that have fully
rusted through there, literally not connected anymore.
Now, Dr. Kochanski acknowledges that there are some cables,
but evidently, those can only save you for so long.
So, look, it is terrifying, I know everybody
is going to spend the next couple of
days, at least being worried about every bridge
they drive over every tunnel they go through.
But again I wanna start with you, what
was your reaction when you saw this this morning?
>> Well, I mean my reaction was of course first shock and just complete
worry that people had died or were close to dying as a result of this.
And as you mentioned, luckily so far, there
are no fatalities, hopefully it stays that way.
But it also of course made me think about the number of bridges that
have collapsed in like the past few years, that barely got any media attention.
This is a common occurrence in the country.
It's not usually a bridge as large or important as this one and I say that
because it's one of the main bridges that's
used a favorite path to get to Downtown Pittsburgh.
So, this isn't some small rinky dink bridge, it's a bridge
that's utilized quite a bit to get people to Downtown Pittsburgh.
And I just think about the fact that this is such
a common occurrence in smaller instances.
And yeah, infrastructure is really, really important, which is why it
was important for the Biden administration to focus on an infrastructure bill.
I hate the way that it was paired down with all
sorts of pro corporate goodies in there,
including privatizing public infrastructure.
But when you really look at some of the main infrastructure that's in place in
this country right now, most of it dates back to FDR era expansion in our economy.
That's terrifying.
And the fact that there's like a lack of real oversight in
inspecting the bridges, inspecting the infrastructure
to ensure that people remain safe.
That's also incredibly worrying as well I mean, you just see this deterioration
in our institutions all around and this is a good example of it.
>> 100% I was just gonna say that, I think that as
someone who was very critical of
only passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
I think we see that even that was vitally necessary and important.
And there are other goodies and good things in
that bill, something like $90 billion dollars for public transportation.
So, let's be honest, given the state of things
in the United States, that was a good bill.
That being said, we need so much more.
But, we're the, supposedly the world's superpower.
We got all the things, all the money, we drive the best cars
and the most amazing access to consumer goods and our bridges are collapsing.
Like we don't need China to beat us, we're beating our
own asses ourselves very, very easily and you see it here.
And also at the same time, Pittsburgh as a city after city, we roll out
tax breaks for corporations, please, please, please,
come give us jobs, come give us jobs.
Meanwhile, bridges are collapsing.
What is being done with all those tax breaks when we
roll out the red carpet, you can't even take care of people.
So, it raises eyebrows and it also means that we did a good
thing in terms of actually even Republicans
got on board with that infrastructure bill.
>> Yeah, yeah and at the same time though, we can acknowledge that
in theory, you could have passed
some version of that bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Giving money to things like bridge maintenance without
also needlessly privatizing tons of our national infrastructure.
So like we were forced to accept that because that's apparently the
best the Democrats can do when they have unified control of government.
That doesn't mean that even that was absent some issues.
And, thankfully, in this case, specifically in
the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, there was in
theory money that could have averted this issue if it had been passed earlier.
Biden was going to visit Pittsburgh today.
So, amazing timing there.
The cosmos is really working overtime.
And he was going to talk about the fact that there
was $1.6 billion from The Federal
Government specifically to improve Pennsylvania's bridges.
So, I would allocate a bit of that to the replacement post haste if you could.
But, it's an amazing thing we're like,
that specific bridge was constructed in 1970.
So, it's existed for longer than the vast
majority of the people watching this have been alive.
And finally money was given out to
stop bridges like that and others from collapsing.
It eventually happened, it took four years of a joke about infrastructure week
during Trump and then finally, after a year of debate, we got it done.
Meanwhile, as we'll talk about later, like Russia goes on the
border with Ukraine were like throwing hundreds of millions of dollars.
And we did allocate money to the bridges, but there's still tons
of other problems, tons of money that could have been allocated to.
For instance, making our infrastructure more
resilient against the threat of climate change.
So, maybe the bridges will be improved.
But, like what about when the oceans rising?
Like can we get Putin to station some tanks off the coast of Florida?
Maybe then the money can go there and we
can start to put up some levees and things.
>> I mean, what I've learned, especially, in
this past week is even if an imminent threat
doesn't exist, just keep repeating that it does exist
and immediately shame anyone who denies that it exists.
And that's it, and just keep moving forward and
maybe who knows, maybe the funding will be there.
Maybe that's what we need to do just continue repeating things.
But in this case we're talking
about infrastructure that's really vulnerable, right?
I mean, we're seeing it happen in real time.
And to your point John about how quickly congress
is willing to allocate funding for weapons in Ukraine.
It shows you exactly who the real players are in our political system.
Who actually gets to say, who's prioritized, or what's
prioritized and it always goes back to corporate interests, right?
When it comes to funding weapons manufacturers
or private military contractors.
That's always gonna take a priority as long as we have this system of legalized bribery in place.
All of those defense contractors spend so much money on lobbying
and they're not doing it out of the kindness of their own hearts.
They're not doing it because they genuinely think that
it's their way of practicing speech in our democratic system.
They're doing it to buy off politicians, so they get massive contracts later.
And we're seeing that play out right now.
Who's advocating for or spending hundreds of millions of
dollars each election season to improve our nation's infrastructure?
No one.
>> Yeah.
>> I would just add, we should dream about another federal works projects.
We should dream about that green new deal.
We should dream about the climate core that is embedded in the Build Back Better Act.
And we should know that one day, we can
hopefully turn away from just corporate power, just turn away
from being at the behest of whichever corporation wants to
give us some jobs in exchange for giant tax breaks.
And these no bid contracts that are only making us less safe where someone's gotta get rich?
What if nobody got rich?
What if we all just got better bridges?
So, I do think that that's a worthy goal.
It's important for us to sort of understand what we're fighting for.
And my God, getting back to some FDR policies, putting people to work, giving
them good jobs, union jobs to build climate resilience, let's do it.
>> I just wanted to say one final thing.
I decided to hold my nose and listen to Biden's speech today.
And it was actually a really good speech, I have to say.
I'm very critical of Biden.
But, he very clearly understands where Americans
are focusing their attention right now, especially
when it comes to yes, the infrastructure.
But, he talked about semiconductors and how there's a factory opening up in
Pennsylvania that will manufacture semiconductors, which
of course there's a huge shortage of.
It's another supply chain issue.
And he focused on how much workers are
gonna make in those new jobs producing the semiconductors.
And we're talking about six figures.
He said the averages somewhere in the six figures range, right?
Which is good money.
I'm curious like what's the median?
[LAUGH] >> Yeah.
>> Right.
But nonetheless, I mean, I love the idea
of focusing on manufacturing products here within our country.
This is not a nationalistic thing.
This is about really bolstering our preparedness
for things that we're experiencing right now, right?
Like we were not prepared for the pandemic because of the fact that we're so reliant
on this global supply chain, which of course
is much more vulnerable than we had realized.
>> Yeah, I will close by saying and bear in mind before I give
you these stats mostly too much of an earlier point that Anna was saying.
This is coming from effectively a trade lobbying group.
But, according to this group, the
United States has about 230,000 bridges collectively
stretching 6300 miles that need to either be replaced or undergo major repairs.
That is effectively, if you were to put them end to end, I believe
it's from about Los Angeles to Atlanta, in bridges that need to be renovated.
46,000 bridges were deemed structurally deficient, the worst rating.
And that group estimates the cost of the job to replace all these at
$164 billion, which obviously renovating tens of
thousands of bridges is an incredible task.
But that's not an incredible price tag in comparison to what we'll
spend blowing up the bridges in other countries in the next year.
So, I think we could manage it and imagine to renovate that many
bridges, how many people would you put to work for a couple of years?
Be pretty amazing, maybe some positive economic results from that.