None shall pass

Bridge over troubled water

THE BRIDGE is cracked, they say, and none shall pass. “We need to get people off the bridge!” screamed a frantic inspector to a 911 operator who would help do just that. And just like that, a busy east/west intercrossing between Arkansas and Tennessee—and between the East Coast and the western states—came to a halt.

Inspectors spent the next few hours trying to find out the extent of this crack in the Mississippi River bridge over

I-40. A crack doesn’t sound all that serious. But then, pictures emerged of what it looks like: Two metal parts of the bridge appear to be physically separated.

Now the bridge is shut down for days or weeks while transportation officials try to figure out the remedy. (Facebook posts suggest trying duct tape.)

So as traffic detours over the Interstate 55 bridge and drivers snarl in frustration at the backups, minds turn to politics, because of course they do. Isn’t Washington debating an infrastructure bill right now? This seems like a prime example of what infrastructure dollars would pay to prevent/repair.

Infrastructure seems like the easiest problem for an administration to tackle. Everyone uses roads and bridges. Dams provide electricity for Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and independents alike. All those things require upkeep. Even conservatives would agree that real infrastructure, as opposed to an infrastructure bill with billions for other things, is something the federal government should handle.

So if everyone needs infrastructure, why is it so hard to negotiate a bill with money for highways and, say, bridge repair? President Biden wants to spend more than $2 trillion and raise taxes a lot. Republicans want to spend somewhere in the billions and raise taxes less, if at all. The two parties should meet in the middle and call it a day.

America is far enough into 2021 that politicians are looking to mid-term elections next year and how they’ll spin what precious little they get done this year. But wouldn’t it make more sense for Democrats and Republicans to be able both to campaign on an infrastructure win?

President Biden is saying he wants to be bipartisan. And so far he seems to be low-key enough that not everyone hates him— yet. (Give it another few weeks, and doubtless we’ll see another column opining that he’s the “worst American president ever,” just like all the others before him.) Nobody expected an instant infrastructure bargain. But how much longer are both sides going to dig in? Politicians in Washington and New York may be able to ignore a broken bridge in West Memphis and East West Memphis. But how about when cracks form in a Brooklyn bridge or one crossing the Potomac?

Every second spent digging in is another chance for an aging piece of infrastructure to fail.

AND FOR those who’ve said on social media that a little crack in a bridge is no big deal, and shutting down a whole interstate for who-knows-how-long is overreacting, we’d remind them of May 26, 2002. We just so happened to be in the newsroom when the news hit, and editors began standing to talk into their phones.

Just across the Arkansas line, near Webbers Falls, Okla., the I-40 bridge over the Arkansas River collapsed after a barge hit a pier. The photos and TV shots showed whole sections of the bridge lying under the water, visible from the air, but clearly sunk. Cars, too. And people in them.

Fourteen people died in the I-40 Disaster, as it’s known.

That inspector in West Memphis-East West Memphis might have prevented an I-40 Disaster Part II. And for that he or she should get a medal.