Jul 23, 2008 9:19 pm US/Central
House Takes Up Oberstar's Bridge Bill
WASHINGTON (AP) ―
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Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who chairs the House Transportation Committee, initially sought a 5-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase to fund $25 billion worth of bridge repairs over three years. (File)
CBS
The House began debate Wednesday on legislation by Rep. Jim Oberstar aimed at improving the safety of the nation's bridges -- nearly a year after the deadly Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis.
Oberstar, D-Minn., said the legislation would help "make those bridges safer, prevent future loss and future collapse, as happened in Minnesota."
A vote on the bill is expected Thursday.
Oberstar, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, initially sought a 5-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase to fund $25 billion worth of bridge repairs over three years. But he had to abandon that plan after failing to win political support for it.
Among other things, the bill would authorize an additional $1 billion next year to rebuild structurally deficient bridges on the national highway system, and states would have to come up with plans to fix such bridges. The bridge that fell in Minneapolis last Aug. 1 had been labeled structurally deficient.
"Our state's tragedy was evidence of America's desperate problem," said Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn. "This vote is about restoring public trust that remains badly broken."
Under the bill, states would have to inspect bridges every two years, and structurally deficient bridges every year. The bill would allow a state to transfer existing Highway Bridge Program funds to other programs only if it has no bridges eligible for replacement on the federal highway system.
The bill would require the Transportation Department to come up with a system to prioritize the fixing or replacement of structurally deficient bridges or functionally obsolete bridges, and also requires the department to update National Bridge Inspection Standards.
The White House said in a Statement of Administration Policy that it opposes the bill unless the $1 billion provision is deleted. The administration said its own request of $39.4 billion in federal aid to states for highways, roads and bridges next year "is both responsive to current needs and consistent with budgetary realities."
Tennessee Rep. John Duncan, the ranking Republican on the Transportation Committee's highways and transit subcommittee, called the extra $1 billion "merely a start," and said he supported the bill. But he and other Republicans expressed concerns about the provision restricting transfers from the bridge program, saying it would harm the flexibility states need in determining where to spend funds.
Oberstar first introduced his bill last year in response to the Minneapolis bridge collapse, which killed 13 people and injured 145. An ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board has found that some of the bridge gussets -- the plates that helped connect its steel girders -- were too thin because of a design error. The NTSB also said that the weight of construction materials on the bridge during resurfacing also was a factor. A final cause is expected by the end of the year.
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The original I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River opened in November 1967 and was 1,907 feet in length. The replacement bridge opened in September 2008 and measures 1,216 feet in length.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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