Congressman Elijah E. Cummings Proudly Representing Maryland's 7th District

Structurally Deficient Bridges in the United States

September 5, 2007

Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure

Washington, D.C.

Mr. Chairman,

I thank you for convening today’s hearing to give us the opportunity to examine structurally deficient bridges in our nation.

The tragic collapse of the I-35W Interstate bridge in Minneapolis demonstrated in the starkest possible terms the true cost of our nation’s under-investment in the maintenance of essential transportation infrastructure.

I commend the inspired leadership you have shown in responding to our nation’s unmet bridge maintenance needs by proposing the National Highway System Bridge Reconstruction Initiative to begin eliminating the backlog in repairs to structurally deficient bridges in our nation.

When construction on America’s Interstate system was initiated now more than 50 years ago, it was done after a national commitment was made to the value of creating a national highway network. Unfortunately, that commitment has not been sustained through these decades to ensure that our nation did the work necessary to adequately maintain the awesome infrastructure we have built.

As a result, we now have more than 70,000 structurally deficient bridges in our nation, including more than 6,175 bridges on the National Highway System that would be targeted by the program Chairman Oberstar has announced.

In my own State of Maryland, 382 bridges out of the 4,889 total bridges in the State are structurally deficient. 47 of the structurally deficient bridges in the State are on the National Highway System, of which at least 6 are located in my District according to the Federal Highway Administration.

These statistics, which I believe are simply stunning in this the richest country in the world, point to the important reality that even if the National Bridge Program Chairman Oberstar has proposed is enacted – as I believe it should be – as large as it will be, it will not address the full backlog of structurally deficient bridges in our nation.

Further, adequate maintenance of our existing infrastructure is only half of the challenge we face in ensuring that our nation’s transportation network meets our nation’s mobility needs.

The roads and transit systems we built in the 1950s and 1960s brought us where we are today – but we have failed to recognize that the system that served us 40 years ago is not adequate to serve the nation we have become.

The total number of vehicles on our roadways is projected to increase from 246 million at the present time to an estimated 400 million by 2055 – and these vehicles are expected to travel some 7 trillion vehicle miles in that year.

Due to the anticipated growth in the number of vehicles on the road, the Federal Highway Administration estimates that 90 percent of urban Interstates will exceed the traffic capacity they were built to carry by 2020 – just 13 years from now.

Unfortunately, pennies will not fill the gaps that are now opening in our transportation network.

Maintaining and expanding our transportation network will require billions of dollars more than our current revenue structures are generating.

More importantly, however, expanding investments in our nation’s infrastructure will require the will and the commitment to refuse to allow our nation to chip and peel and droop and collapse below our very feet.

Just as a national commitment spearheaded the creation of the Interstate, we need to recommit to the value of investing in our nation – and we need to commit to the idea that infrastructure is a public good.

I again applaud Chairman Oberstar for his commitment to strengthening our national infrastructure and I yield back the balance of my time.