Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The push to add a bike-ped lane to Cleveland's planned new Cuyahoga River bridge, a replacement for the crumbling Innerbelt span, is picking up new political support this week after a local advocacy campaign.

The Plain Dealer newspaper reported earlier this week that Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D) has asked the state DOT to reevaluate its decision against adding a bike-ped lane to the new bridge. State transport officials had previously contended that the new bridge could lose $85 million in already-allocated federal stimulus money if the planning process were reopened to consider bike-ped access.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who represents Cleveland, had previously come out in favor of the new lane, but Strickland's move came following a letter he received from the state's junior senator, Sherrod Brown (D). Yesterday the governor edged closer to an endorsement of bike-ped access to the new bridge, as his spokeswoman told the Cleveland Scene: "It is the governor’s preference that a lane be included if possible."

A copy of the letter from Brown that appears to be driving the new momentum is available after the jump.

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In today's New York Times, Bob Herbert celebrates the cause of infrastructure maintenance -- a less exciting proposition for politicians than cutting the ribbon at new transportation projects, but in many ways more vital to economic growth.

After talking to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), an avowed booster of the National Infrastructure Bank concept, Herbert asks, "What's wrong with us?" and continues:

We’re so far behind in some areas that ... Rendell has said that getting our infrastructure act together can feel like “sledding uphill.”

“When I took over as governor,” he said, “I was told that Pennsylvania led the nation in the number of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges. We had more than 5,600 of them. So I put a ton of money into bridge repair. We more than tripled the amount in the capital budget, from $200 million a year to $700 million a year. And I got a special appropriation from the Legislature to do $200 million a year extra for the next four years.”

One might be tempted to respond that what's wrong with American infrastructure policy has much to do with pundits such as Randal O'Toole of the Cato Institute, who converts new acolytes in Washington by arguing that the biggest defect in national infrastructure policy is insufficient road spending. To O'Toole, the fact that one in four of U.S. bridges is rated obsolete or deficient is no big deal:

“Functionally obsolete” bridges are not in any danger of falling down; they merely have narrow lanes, inadequate overhead clearances, overly sharp on- and off-ramps, or other outdated design features. These bridges pose no risk to auto drivers unless the drivers themselves drive recklessly.

... "[S]tructurally deficient” bridges have suffered enough deterioration or damage that their load-carrying abilities are lower than when they were built. But that still doesn’t mean they are about to fall down; though they may be closed to heavy loads, the most serious problem is that they cost more to maintain than other bridges.

When the debate stumbles on the mere question of whether deficiency is worth fixing -- incidentally, the National Bridge Inventory states that deficient and obsolete bridges often contribute to congestion -- it's difficult to see a broad consensus emerging in favor of government spending to bring our built environment into good order. What Herbert didn't address in his column, unfortunately, was how to carve out that consensus by talking in new and different ways about the importance of infrastructure investment.

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Treasury Department counselor Gene Sperling told senators today that "we definitely support looking at ... more merit-based" approaches to transportation spending, particularly an expansion of the stimulus law's competitive TIGER grants and a national infrastructure bank.

Sperling's comments align with a White House document that last week summarized its preferred approaches to crafting new jobs legislation. But with the House moving quickly on a jobs bill that directs transport funding through typical -- and somewhat controversial -- state formulas, Sperling's stance could encourage senators to take a different route with their own jobs effort, slated for release in January.

Sperling, who during the Clinton years held the advisory position now occupied by Larry Summers, spoke at a Senate Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) hearing on job creation. The DPC's chairman, Byron Dorgan (ND), is partnering with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) to write the upper chamber's jobs bill.

And Dorgan sounded very much open to adding more infrastructure investment to the legislation. "I happen to think [the first stimulus] was woefully inadequate" in its attention to America's crumbling built environment, he said today.

"Spending money on infrastructure that is necessary to be spent," Dorgan added, referring to an emphasis on repair of roads and bridges, "one -- creates jobs, and two -- leaves an asset in its wake that was necessary to rehabilitate."

Dorgan was not the only senator calling for a "fix-it-first"-style approach to economic recovery legislation, despite the skepticism of GOP-leaning witnesses such as Lawrence Lindsey and Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

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In the wake of the 2007 collapse of Minnesota's I-35 bridge, Washington policymakers vowed a renewed focus on repairing the nation's aging infrastructure. But weeks after the fatal collapse, Congress approved a transportation spending bill with 704 earmarked projects, at a total cost topping $570 million -- and just 11 percent of those earmarks went towards bridge repair, according to a new report released today.

Today's report, produced by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), contrasts the low amounts lawmakers set aside for bridge repair with the flood of campaign contributions sent their way by highway, development, automobile, and construction groups.

During the election cycle that reached its peak in 2008, the year that bridge repairs accounted for 74 of Congress' 704 transportation earmarks, U.S. PIRG found that road-building interests steered $80.3 million to federal campaigns.

The same highway-centric groups also lavished $53.5 million in campaign cash on state elections, in which the costs of securing a victory are often much lower, according to the report. Road-building interests split their federal donations more evenly, steering 47 percent to Democrats and 53 percent to Republicans, compared with a 61-39 split in favor of the GOP in state elections.

The report (available here) separates donations from "transportation" versus "construction" groups but does not name which lobbying entities U.S. PIRG singled out for analysis, making it difficult to directly connect specific donations to specific earmarks.

But the authors' conclusion "that elected officials often overlook preventative maintenance projects, especially when new capacity projects are encouraged by campaign contributions" was bolstered by an Associated Press investigation one year after the Minnesota collapse. That AP probe found that just 12 percent of the deficient bridges getting the most state-level traffic had received any attention other than regular maintenance.

"The greatest need, for almost every place, is investing in existing infrastructure," said Mark Stout, who spent 25 years working on policy at the New Jersey DOT before helping put together U.S. PIRG's report.

"Each earmark and each project has its own story," he added, "but by and large, I think it's safe to say that a structurally deficient bridge is not going to rally around it a lot of local elected officials and business interests that are lobbying to make [repairs] happen. They sort of think that's someone else's job or that someone else is going to take care of it."

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It sounds like the start of a wonky transportation joke: Have you ever crossed a "bridge in a backpack"?

Residents of Pittsfield, Maine, are doing so every day, and the concept could eventually be used on a national level. The innovative technology, viewed firsthand yesterday by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, was developed by researchers at the University of Maine's Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center (AEWC).

The AEWC's materials are made from innovative carbon fiber tubes that are inflated to surround a steel support structure built in the shape of the bridge span. After the tubing is fused to the steel beams, concrete is poured in to fill the tube and create a bridge span -- a process that took just one hour to complete when used on the Neal Bridge in Pittsfield.

The bridge's nickname, in fact, is a bit misleading; one backpack can carry enough deflated fiber tubing to make a full arch for the bridge. The Neal span required 23 arches to run 36 feet, and the new technology will soon be used on a 46-foot span in North Anson, Maine.

Yet the technology's potential to dramatically cut bridge construction time, while decreasing the carbon footprint of the process, has attracted a promise of $20 million in new capital from Advanced Infrastructure Technlogies, a private Florida-based firm. LaHood was drawn to view a lab demonstration of the technology at the invitation of one of Maine's House members, Rep. Michael Michaud (D).

LaHood told the Bangor Daily News after the event that the U.S. DOT could broaden the technology's use once it wins approval from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), which helps states and localities test and implement new construction methods.

Michaud could also get a chance to help implement the "backpack" bridge thanks to his seat on the House transport committee, which will assemble the next long-term federal infrastructure bill sometime in the coming months.

After the jump, check out a picture of the Neal Bridge in Pittsfield.

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