Bridge Collapse: Minneapolis

This is incredible. The Peoples' Republic of Minnesota (PROM) has more government per square inch than any other patch of ground between the two coasts. The PROM has inspectors who inspect the inspectors. How could all these defects in the bridge escape the detection of all that government?

It showed how painfully inadequete the American infrastructure is while the US waste money on needless wars.

I live within a half mile of a bridge of nearly identical structure to the one that fell in minnesota. I cross is everyday, sometimes on multiple occasions. there is contruction on the road just past the bridge, and it merges back to one lane at the end of it, so everyday at quitting time it takes 15-20 minutes just to cross it. You better believe that evertime i'm sitting still on that bridge, a hundred feet above lake lanier with cars all around that this tragedy enters my mind.

Solid listing. . .I think it should be higher, but I'm afraid it will fade as people become more complacent about things (like this) that deserve more attention. . .

This is significant in the respect that it allowed the public to cast an eye at the issue of our aging infrastructure. It really isn't talked a lot about, but many roads, bridges and overpasses in this country have been in operation for over 50 years now; some of these pieces of infrastructure are not regularly inspected or repaired. And this isn't the first collapse of a major bridge; about 5 years back, another bridge on I-30 in Arkansas also collapsed. The Minneapolis bridge collapse though occurred in heavy traffic, unlike the situation in Arkansas, which occurred in open highway. So it isn't an isolated incident. In fact, expect to see this happen more often. It has been estimated that almost 25% of our bridges are structurally deficient. Estimates on how much it will cost to bring them up to code seem rather astronomical in cost. Billions of dollars are spent every year on infrastructure, but those funds arent used for that purpose. Here's the problem; there's no politi... Read more

I can only imagine how terrifying this must have been for those who were driving over this bridge.

What a sad state of affairs when it takes a tragedy like this to bring attention to the fact that so many of our roads and bridges all over the country have very poor structural integrity. At the time so much of our infrastructure was constructed, particularly during the 50's and 60's during the interstate highway construction years  and many predating that time clearly can not hold the capacity of todays traffic volumes. Unfortunately Uncle Sam has their prioritys on pork barrell spending projects like building bridges to nowhere in Alaska, yet can not give adequate funding to states like Minnesota to properly maintain existing structures and all over the country many bridges are being neglected. And its not just the funding aspect, whoever is inspecting these bridges is clearly not doing their job, covering decaying structures up with band aids is not a solution and imposes safety risks.  My thoughts and prayers go out to the families affected by this tragedy.