America in transition: Aging infrastructure at a breaking point

fewer travelers and commuters during the pandemic have meant less gridlock on highways and shorter security lines at airports this holiday but experts say behind the scenes key parts of the nation's infrastructure system are at a breaking point so tonight in our series america in transition we look at the cost of years of neglect of our roads and bridges airports and electrical grid and what president-elect biden is promising to do in his first 100 days here's devon dwyer on the campaign trail it's been a tantalizing promise for years let's build wireless networks into rural communities so everybody can tap into world markets let's put construction back workers back to work a one trillion dollar infrastructure plan to build new roads and bridges and airports and tunnels and highways and railways all across our great nation upgrades to infrastructure to improve our commutes speed shipments of products and add u.s construction jobs by the millions but inaction in washington has made it all a running joke this is the dramatic conclusion of donald trump's infrastructure week it's all we've been talking about this week right infrastructure you know fixing our old bridges then jumping off them the to-do list of repairs is staggering 177 billion dollars needed for the electrical grid 42 billion for aging airports and 1.1 trillion for crumbling roads and structurally deficient bridges [Laughter] cobit is compounding the crisis with fewer travelers at airports and on toll roads fewer are paying the taxes and user fees that fund repairs you've got municipal and state budgets that are starting to buckle under these unprecedented demands meaning less support is available for our parks and schools and other publicly owned infrastructure precisely at a time when we need to be investing in it subways commuter rail and bus lines under strain before kovid are now bracing for deep cuts it's the hardest thing i've ever had to deal with and i as you as you may know i ran bwi airport right after 9 11 and i dealt with a lot of issues there but this is unbelievable in the nation's capital rail ridership is down 90 percent bus passengers down 60 percent paul wiedefeld oversees the country's second busiest transit system behind new york city i mean you look at new york chicago philadelphia san francisco boston they're all in the same place they're getting to that same point we are which is you know we're facing huge financial challenges and until this thing's really under control people aren't coming back to use our system new york's mta faces an 8 billion deficit through 2024. in chicago it's 500 million while in boston 600 million officials have warned of more layoffs eliminating service closing stations and cutting the frequency of trains and buses some much-needed system upgrades are put on hold or canceled we have a tremendous backlog when it comes to transit that backlog could threaten the covid recovery as businesses rely on public transit to bring back workers shoppers and tourists how long do you think this is going to last it's definitely months i mean we're definitely months let's see how the vaccine all plays out both in terms of its acceptance and again is reliability on the roads there may be less rush hour gridlock but with fewer filling up at the pump and paying gas taxes the highway trust fund is taking a hit more than 56 thousand american bridges roughly one in 10 are in urgent need of major repairs or replacement we have pressed our luck i believe and i am concerned i'm very concerned about it could be too late there there may be a bridge collapse on the horizon kimberly brown is a survivor of america's crumbling infrastructure 13 years ago she was driving to a soccer game in minneapolis when interstate 35w over the mississippi river suddenly collapsed this is a bridge that that seems so strong and so powerful and has been able to just absolutely devour itself if you will i was standing on the bridge after falling with the bridge and thinking i was surely going to die and we had climbed out of the car and we were standing there waiting on the bridge absolutely in shock thinking this cannot possibly be real and so i just raised my arm and just took a picture and i know that there are the emotional and psychological wounds my injuries were all invisible my injuries were an eerie metaphor to the damages that were happening under this bridge and the damages i discovered were happening across different infrastructure and that is happening all across our country brown set out to investigate on her own writing a book about her findings and calling on leaders in both parties to see the human costs of infrastructure neglect once we embrace the reality of why it truly fell then we need to organize and bind together regardless of party bridges don't fall and ask us what party we are we all fell 145 people were hurt it did not matter what their voter registration card said congress and its massive year-end stimulus bill approved 14 billion dollars in relief for public transit which major cities say will prevent deeper service cuts and layoffs for now it's a down payment an important down payment on what's going to have to be done beginning the end of january into february president-elect joe biden says a long elusive bipartisan infrastructure deal is a top priority tapping former south bend mayor pete boudej's transportation secretary to help lead the charge americans expect us to see to it that the idea of an infrastructure week is associated with results and never again a media punch line high expectations met with cautious optimism one of the issues we get we get bogged down by each time is how do you fund it and the question we have to ask ourselves is how do you not fund it and what does it cost when you don't fund it do you think that this transition and this new administration will be different than the last two infrastructure to me is jobs that's what it really means i think the the president-elect has shown that you know that he's an infrastructure guy he wants to do that and particularly given what we've been through with the covid we need to start that economy up and the quickest way to do that is start investing in infrastructure a fresh call to upgrade america and supercharge our economic recovery in the process for abc news live i'm devon dwyer in washington and our thanks to devin hi everyone george stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the abc news youtube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and don't forget to download the abc news app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

Views: 40,149

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Keywords: Joe, Biden, President-elect, pandemic, America, in, Transition, infrastructure, abc, news, Prime, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-74959450

Id: 1gc5pXB9aIw

Length: 7min 10sec (430 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/TropicalKing]

No duh. America's infrastructure has been crumbling for a long, long time. We just don't build too much stuff in our country anymore. China can build a hospital in 10 days, we can't do that in 10 years. There would be so many local protestors, local NIMBYs, building zoning laws, and union corruption if we wanted to build a hospital in 10 days or even 10 months.