Infrastructure Irony

cnn.com

Today, President Biden went to Pittsburgh.  Per TribLive.com, he was going there “to tout the recently passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill with a stop planned at Carnegie Mellon University’s Mill 19 research and development center in Hazelwood.”  With the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the faltering stock market, and the ongoing iffiness of the pandemic, the President’s approval rating is low and he needs both to show more dynamic  leadership and to generate good PR.  This visit to Pittsburgh is the start of this new strategy of Biden getting out and meeting with the American people.

On the drive to the university this morning, I heard a report on NPR’s Morning Edition that a snow-covered bridge collapsed in Pittsburgh a few hours before the President was supposed to arrive.  The bridge collapsed just after 6 am and luckily schools had a delayed start and traffic was at a minimal on a road that is traversed by about 15,000 vehicles per day.  Twelve people were injured but, thankfully, none seriously.  Four cars were on the bridge at the time of collapse.   A natural gas line was broken but the flow was turned off before there was any ignition or explosion.  The reports said all say that the bridge was snow covered.  Snow and ice can certainly be heavy, but my guess is that is not the main contributor to the bridge collapsing. 

It is incredibly ironic to have a bridge collapse the on the same day in the same city the President is visiting to speak with infrastructure being one of the key topics of the speech.  This is fodder for the conspiracy theorists out there. 

Pittsburgh is set in a very hilly area.  The Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers meet there and become the Ohio River.  This makes Pittsburgh a city of bridges.  There are over 700 bridges in Pittsburgh.  That is more than any other city in the world.  There are another 500 or so in Alleghany County outside the Pittsburgh city limits.  179 of the bridges in Pittsburgh and the rest of the county have poor ratings which has mean they have an unacceptable probability of failing as this one did.

We have been talking about the need to address our infrastructure for years.  Before President Trump no administration did much about it.  President Trump sounded like he was going to do something but didn’t get to it.  President Biden actually got legislation passed. 

I hope we do this and I hope even more this is only the beginning of a larger transformation.

I believe we have to put our differences aside and invest on this country.  We don’t need to be the policemen of the world.  They really don’t care for or appreciate when we do it anyway.  We need to invest in our infrastructure and the education of our own people.  We can do it much more strategically and effectively than we do it today.  I would like to see better roads and schools.  I would love to see our education system become one of the best in the world with a much truer focus on STEM.  I want us to be a center of innovation and a manufacturing center of excellence in the industries we deem as strategic.  We do this by including everyone in the redefined American dream minimizing poverty and improving the lot of everyone.

Am I dreaming sure?  For sure!  Everything great has to start with a great and bold vision.  Will it be easy to do?  Of course not.  Great and bold visions require great, bold, and unified effort to be realized. 

It always starts with a dream.  I can have a dream… can’t I?