Where the Bad Bridges Are

[illinoisprogressive]

I was floating around blogs off a link list from Huffpo and ended up on sullivan's page. yep I know.
anyway I was scrolling down to see if anything was worth reading or laughing about and came across this.
He has a map of where the bad bridges are. In red.
So, check to see if there are any bad ones where you live. Luckily, None in my area - surprising.

The map is achived from 1994. But, then, that bridge that collapsed was first flagged in 1990.




http://www.andrewsullivan.com/

[aquart]

1. Oh. New York. All of New York. Oh.

And they think terrorists are frightening? I have to cross the East River to visit my mother. What do they say about the tunnels?

[Nite Owl]

2. New Yorker here

and it ain't lookin' good. Every county in the state.

[DemBones DemBones]

5. Damn, and people criticize the South! (I know you didn't, but you've seen

it here, I'm sure.) What's the problem in N.Y.? It can't all be Rudy's fault, though I'd like to blame him.

The map shows most of the bad bridges that are in the South to be in Mississippi and Louisiana, both very poor states. Oklahoma's got problems, too, as does Iowa.

The Atlantic Monthly article Sullivan got the map from said:

"More than 80 percent of all U.S. bridges are located east of the geographic midpoint between the coasts. The skewed distribution is due in part to the way the Midwest and Great Plains states were settled--in the so-called "township-and-range" pattern, which resulted in the laying down of land parcels and roadways in evenly spaced grids; in order to maintain this even spacing, many bridges had to be built over small waterways. Iowa, for example contains more bridges than Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming combined."

[Nite Owl]

9. Off the top of my head I can think of

a few reasons:

NY is old, we were here when commerce first began, we have a lot of roads and bridges.

We give considerably more to the Feds than we get back, we are a donor state.

12 yrs of Pataki and a Republican Senate.

[DemBones DemBones]

10. Do you think it's wrong for richer states to give more to the Feds than

poorer states? It seems right to me in the same way that richer people should be taxed more than poorer people. But it's not fair to let NY's infrastructure fall apart, either. The Feds are wasting money in Iraq and Afghanistan that's needed here. And NASA is launching a mission to Mars tomorrow that is not going to help on Earth but is going to cost a lot, when we need to be saving our planet. I don't think we're going to be colonizing Mars, think we need to fix things here.

Republicans are always a problem. . . They don't want the government to be financially responsible for anything.

[Nite Owl]

11. Yes and no

There are red states that refuse to raise taxes at all on their wealthy and business. I don't remember which state it was, I think it was Alabama, where a republican minister campaigned for office(in a primary) that it was only right, as you say, for the rich to pay fair taxes. He lost. If they aren't willing to do what is needed to get more revenue because they want to lure business away with cheap non union labor then it isn't fair that we NYers pay for them, it was clearly their decision, they voted for people who will not collect the revenue that they need. Their are states that are mostly rural and depend on tourism (weather) for revenue like VT but they seem to have their priorities right, money is spent on education and healthcare. Some states are poorer and they do need help but they can't blatantly refuse to do something to help themselves before crying to the Feds.

[DemBones DemBones]

15. It's a complicated issue. It's really stupid that

most if not all Southern states have "right to work" laws, which were sold to the working class as "protecting them from having to pay union dues for nothing." On the other hand, Northern companies moved their plants and mills to those states to take advantage of the cheap labor provided by non-union employees. So it's the fault of rich people in North and South who put profit before people.

We know that surveys have shown that most people think of themself as middle class, even upper middle class, when they're only making, oh, $15-20,000 a year. Many people also believe that they might be rich someday (often out of hopes of hitting it big in the lottery) and therefore oppose higher taxes for the rich and support doing away with the estate tax, fearing they're going to have to pay tax on the house or farm mom and dad are going to leave them, never mind that the property isn't worth enough to be subject to estate taxes.

They've been fooled by the GOP and the anti-union people for so long, it's hard to convince them that what they've been told is wrong. I'd guess that's why the Republican who wanted to tax the rich didn't win in Alabama. But it's also the case that rich people vote regularly and poor people don't, and Alabama has its share of rich people and business interests that would have opposed that candidate.

Ronald Reagan is to blame for this cycle of ignorance. As the nationwide grief over his death showed, a lot of people still believe he was a great president and don't know how he screwed them over. Maybe, maybe, the rejection of Bush will lead to some rethinking, but a lot of people don't think much about politics, don't have the time or inclination.

One thing that works to raise money in every state is a state lottery, but, as many others have said, it's a tax on the poor and those who don't understand probabilities. I try to tell myself it's fun for them and gives them hope but it always makes me sad to see poor people buying a fistful of lottery tickets.

[DemBones DemBones]

3. On Countdown tonight, the guest was from Air America and

she said that of all the bridges that are crossed by 190,000 or more vehicles daily, 20 are rated. . . trying to remember exactly what she said, whether they were as likely to collapse/as in need of reinforcement as the I-35 bridge was. I'd really like to get a list of those 20. I don't recall the guest's name but she must have a source for that info.

It was a great segment, began with a couple of Congresswomen speaking out against the outrage of how much money we are spending in Iraq while our infrastructure is crumbling, and the woman from Air America continued that theme, plus talking about how Reagan started the problem when he said in his first inaugural speech that government was the problem. She didn't mention Grover Norquist's famous quote about starving the government until it's small enough to drown in the bath tub, as I was hoping she would. Americans in general don't know about people like Norquist and Ledeen and other enemies of the people.

I wish I could remember her name. Keith said she has a nightly show, so someone here will surely know who she is. Or -- duh! -- I could go look at their website. Guess it's past my bedtime! Brain s-l-o-w-i-n-g down.

It would be very good to know where those 20 bridges are in order to a) avoid them if at all possible and b) raise hell until they're repaired, so I'll try to find out from Air America.

[proud patriot]

4. that was Rachel Maddow

:)

[DemBones DemBones]

7. Thank you! I thought I'd remember her name after seeing it onscreen

but I didn't. Short term memory loss and I don't even :smoke:

[proud patriot]

14. No problem

:smoke:

[oldtime dfl_er]

6. None in Minneapolis?

:shrug:

www.scarebaby.com

[DemBones DemBones]

8. The map's from 1994. The article, and explanation of map legend, is at

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199403/decrepit-bridges

It's not good if there's a lot of blue where you are, either, according to the map legend, and we need to remember this is 13 years later, not to mention that the date was probably gathered before 1994 and mapped in 1994.

[Flabbergasted]

12. Someone send this to Hill. nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

13. Here is a larger version