James Oberstar

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. I think we will have lots of help on that next year.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I would inquire of the Chair how much time remains on both sides.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland, the Chair of the Coast Guard Subcommittee.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition to the amendment, although I do not oppose the amendment.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. OBERSTAR. I too concur and I join the gentleman from Minnesota and the local government officials in a review of the Winona Bridge. As the gentleman pointed out, Madam Chairman, it's such a terrible irony that we're highlighting this bridge on a stamp celebrating Minnesota's sesquicentennial and then the bridge is found to be deficient, so deficient that it had to be closed. The gentleman's amendment requiring that a report within 15 days of a finding that results in closure of a bridge should also report on the economic impact and the effect on regional transportation, this will benefit all of America, not just Winona or the recent situation at Hastings in Minnesota close by. It will benefit all of America. I rise in support of the amendment offered by the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Walz). This amendment requires the Secretary of Transportation to report to Congress, within 15 days of issuing a critical finding that results in the closure of a bridge, on the economic impact and effect on regional transportation that will result from the bridge closure. This amendment also requires the Secretary to recommend solutions to mitigate such hardships. The gentleman's district was recently hit with one such closure in the City of Winona. In early June, the Minnesota Department of Transportation ordered the closure of the Highway 43 bridge over the Mississippi River. The closure was triggered when inspectors raised concerns about steel plates that help to hold the bridge together. One plate was so riddled with corrosion that an inspector's hammer went right through it. The 2,289-foot-long bridge is the main artery between Winona, Minnesota, a town of about 30,000 people, and the Wisconsin communities of Fountain City and Arcadia. Roughly 11,600 vehicles crossed the bridge daily before it was closed. Commuters to and from Winona are now burdened with a significant detour on their trip to work. To access the nearest river crossings at Wabasha and La Crosse, they have to drive an additional 60 to 70 miles each way, adding well over an hour to their commutes and forcing them to bear extreme financial burdens given the current skyrocketing price of gas. To help mitigate this added inconvenience, the City of Winona has been forced to spend almost $85,000 a week to ferry commuters across the Mississippi River. Once across the river, shuttle buses and vans drive commuters to various points in the city. Many businesses in Winona have also experienced economic difficulties as a result of the bridge closure and employers worry about their employees' ability to arrive at work on time. We have seen similar hardships in St. Cloud and Duluth, Minnesota, where bridges were closed because of safety concerns. The flow of goods and people on our nation's interconnected surface transportation system are greatly inconvenienced by disruption to bridges anywhere on the system. This amendment ensures that we take the necessary steps to consider, at the Federal level, what can be done to minimize the economic impact of bridge closures on our nation's roadways. To assist cities and States impacted by bridge closures, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield myself such time as I may consume. There is no limitation on the flexibility of States to use their bridge formula funds so long as they comply with one issue, and that is, certify that where you have structurally deficient bridges that are on the national highway system that should be replaced that you have addressed the replacement issue. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has the highest number of structurally deficient bridges in the Nation. Yet they transferred $2.2 billion of their Federal highway bridge funds out of that program into other needs of the State. Well, over that same period of time, since 2003, they transferred those dollars, and the number of structurally deficient bridges in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania increased by 500. You can't have it both ways, I'm saying. We have a category for bridge construction, maintenance and replacement, and if you transfer money out of it, then you can't complain that you don't have flexibility. You can't complain that a bridge fell down because there are other needs. Address those needs first. The highway bridge program represents about 11 percent of the overall funding level of the current law, SAFETEA-LU, but as the Office of Management and Budget has issued rescission orders cutting funds from the overall surface transportation program, $3.4 billion in rescission of contract authority have come out of the bridge program. So States are victimizing their bridge formula program when the rescissions come. Now maybe we should make the whole thing a block grant program and not have categories. If we do, then States will have all the authority they need to shift dollars around. But I think that over the years, successive Congresses in the 50 years of the interstate highway system and the highway trust fund have concurred in the categories of funding. They serve a useful purpose, and we should maintain those categories, and make some adjustments in them. I think we should revisit the needs formula as the gentleman from Tennessee has suggested, and other Members have suggested. We should perhaps rewrite the entire needs formula. But that is a matter for next year, not in this bill. I thought we should have a down payment of a billion dollars to get States started on addressing their structurally deficient bridge problem and expand that funding next year when we get into the authorization period. For the moment, I think this legislation represents what we can do and should be doing in the short term to set the stage for a longer-haul revision of the bridge program. Again I compliment the State of Minnesota Department of Transportation for moving ahead so vigorously on I-35W and leaving a great legacy for the future. I also once again express my great appreciation to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) the chairman of our Surface Subcommittee, and the gentleman from Tennessee, the ranking member on the subcommittee, and my good friend and partner, the ranking member on the committee, Mr. Mica, for participating and for their thoughtful observations about the legislation before us, for the many suggestions that we have incorporated, and look forward to continuing this work as we move towards the reauthorization next year.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Chairman, on August 1 of last year, I was at this microphone managing the conference report, with our colleague, Mr. Mica from Florida, ranking member on the committee, the conference report on the Water Resources Development Act when my BlackBerry buzzed. I looked to see what message was coming in, and I saw an announcement that a bridge had collapsed and there was an ``M'' alongside it. I thought, a Third World country? Then I looked closer. That M was Minnesota. That bridge was I-35W. It carries, or had carried, an average of 140,000 vehicles a day. Thirteen people were victims, 88 to 100 other people were injured, a dramatic collapse. Twenty years ago, on December 1, 1987, 20 years ago, I opened hearings as Chair of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight on Bridge Safety. I said, ``There are an estimated 376,000 bridges . . . of that number, 217,000 are Federal-aid Interstate, primary, secondary and urban bridges. ``They carry 85 percent of the Nation's traffic, yet 76,000 of these bridges are deficient and that number has been gradually increasing over the last four years.'' That was 20 years ago. Today, we have 153,000 structurally and functionally deficient bridges. ``We know there are elements of bridge design of particular concern to bridge inspectors; that is, bridges without redundant members to prevent a tragic collapse if that one critical member should fail.'' I-35W was one of those fracture critical bridges. One essential element failed. The whole bridge could collapse and it did. There were multiple causes, and we await the determination of the National Transportation Safety Board. I said further, ``We have to ensure that inspection personnel are keenly aware of the problems involved with bridges whose supporting members are set in the floor of the body of water as compared to those that are set up on pilings driven into the subsoil and deeper.'' We're hoping in these hearings ``to find out how many of these types of bridges are in the Nation's bridge inventory. Right now that information appears to be scarce and perhaps in many States not maintained at all.'' A key witness at that hearing, professor of bridge engineering Dr. Gerald Donaldson, said that in his estimation, ``Bridge maintenance was in the Stone Age. We have no good, logical way of selecting the proper bridges to repair, rehabilitate or replace other than our memory and manual review. ``Most States have virtually no bridge maintenance programs with specific, qualified maintenance goals; no documented maintenance processes; no rationally planned aggressive strategies to arrest or slow bridge deterioration. Many States address maintenance deficiencies on an ad hoc basis.'' He said, ``There are many States out there who are not even using the easily available technology'' to assess bridge conditions. ``In terms of more sophisticated technology, many of the States basically are only dimly aware of what that technology is.'' Well, I can say that in 20 years, not much has changed. Despite efforts to increase funding for bridge inspection, bridge safety, personnel, train those personnel better, train Federal and State inspectors to higher standards over the last 20 years, we have failed, and a bridge failed. We bring to the House floor today legislation that will put the Nation on the right track to raising the standards by which we build bridges in the first place, raising the standards by which we determine which bridges are structurally deficient and which among those are the most critical bridges to repair and a categorizing and prioritizing of those bridges to increase the standards by which we train bridge inspectors at the Federal and State level and increase the funding for States and the Federal Government to hire the necessary number of bridge inspectors to raise the standards, make those bridges safer, prevent future loss and future collapse as happened in Minnesota. This legislation will move us in that direction. There may be some little differences about the structure of this proposal, but we in the committee are agreed on the path, on the direction, on the goal, on the objectives. The funding issues we will address next year in the surface transportation authorization bill. For now, we need to put in place this structure raising the standards by which we determine structural deficiency of bridges, categorizing them, establishing a yardstick of measurement, having it vetted by the National Academy of Sciences so that we have an absolutely transparent and reliable means of determining the prioritization for investment in and addressing the needs of structurally deficient bridges. Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison) in whose district I-35W collapsed.

Mr. OBERSTAR. If the gentleman would yield, paraphrasing Benjamin Banneker, a brilliant man, who said, ``A mind is a terrible thing to waste.'' And I said, paraphrasing it, a tragedy is a terrible thing to waste.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Does the gentleman have time to yield?

Mr. OBERSTAR. Those are valid concerns. First of all, on the bridge inspection standards, the Federal Highway Administration is directed by the legislation to raise the standards. They will do this in consultation with the States. Pennsylvania is recognized as having very high standards for its bridge inspectors, and the country can benefit from Pennsylvania in that process. So Pennsylvania will be one of the leaders. Secondly, the matter of transfer of funds, of flexibility, we, for years, when we first established the bridge category, gave States flexibility to transfer funds out of that account up to 50 percent. In the SAFETEA legislation, SAFETEA-LU current law, the language was further refined to distribute funds on a needs basis. If that formula is wrong, if that's the wrong way to do it, then we will correct it in the next legislation. This legislation deals only with current law. And that needs formula is based on the question to be determined by each State, in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration, on how much it costs to maintain, to replace bridges in a State, and then, under those factors, the allocation is made by the Federal Highway Administration to the States. Maybe we need to change that altogether in the next legislation. I'm only dealing with current law, again, in this bill. And since we have seen in my State, Minnesota, they transferred 49 percent of their money--just to the limit of the law--out of the bridge account to other purposes, and then said, when the bridge collapsed, that, oh, well, there was so much money spent on bicycle paths, we didn't have money for bridges. They transferred the money out. They made the decision to do that. We're saying in this legislation, fix your bridge, your most critical bridge issues first. Certify you've done that. Then you can transfer those remaining dollars out elsewhere. But I think we want accountability for the States. Now, the gentleman from Tennessee raised a very important issue--if the gentleman would continue to yield--about this category for bridges. Another issue for consideration next year is whether we should have a bridge category at all. That's something we can make a determination on. Maybe we shouldn't have this at all. Maybe we should just simply have a bridge inspection program and require States to act on the results of their own bridge inspections made to these new higher standards and verified by the National Academy of Sciences. And I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. OBERSTAR. If the gentleman would yield further, ask them that question about whether we ought to have a category for bridges at all.

Mr. OBERSTAR. And that's something we must consider in the broader policy considerations next year.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kagen).

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Chairman, I yield myself 6 minutes. Here is, in the well of the House, a chart listing the status of the structurally deficient bridges eligible for replacement State by State. We also have a smaller document at the committee table that Members can take with them. But this shows 589 bridges on the interstate system and 2,067 bridges overall on the national highway system that are in the structurally deficient category, eligible for replacement, and that is the standard by which we, in this legislation, determine whether a State qualifies for moving money out of its bridge account. We're just saying, once you have determined that you have structurally deficient bridges, fix them first, and we're saying just those that need to be replaced, not those that just need adjustments, but those that need to be replaced, do that first, then transfer money out of your bridge account. States have transferred the money out of their bridge account, as I said earlier, and the State of Minnesota didn't address their bridge needs, and then the bridge collapsed. And they're looking for a handout. Well, if we're going to continue in the future with a category for bridge maintenance and replacement, then this is the standard we should have. We can make the determination in the next legislation. I will rely heavily on the gentleman from Tennessee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica), the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), Chair of the Surface Subcommittee, who has one of the most severe bridge problems on Interstate 5 in the State of Oregon, on whether we should continue with the idea of a category for bridge funding. If we do, then we have to have better standards by which bridges are built, maintained and inspected. And this legislation puts us on course toward that goal. Now I want to show what has happened. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) cited the speed with which the State of Minnesota has responded in rebuilding the bridge. These two photographs show the bridge replacement in two phases, the top portion showing where it was just about 3 weeks ago, and the bottom portion with only 2\1/2\ feet separating the two segments, the north and south segments of the bridge. I was on that bridge on Sunday afternoon, observed the extraordinary work, the speed with which the bridge was constructed. This is the way we should build bridges for the future, with sensors embedded in the structure itself, sensors that tell the temperature of the bridge, the coefficient of expansion and contraction. The wind velocity pressures on the bridge will be detected by sensors in that structure. There are also long-in-use rollers on the bridge so they can move north and south, expansion and contraction, but much higher quality than ever before built into those rollers. There is also an ice detection system operated by temperature, so that before freezing conditions are encountered, de-icing may be sprayed onto the bridge structure to prevent icing conditions. These are highly advanced technology systems that have not been built into bridges previously, and as many sensors as are going into this bridge, there are also sensors that detect minute cracks that can develop in a bridge and alert bridge engineers before something serious happens. That is the kind of quality that we need to build into future bridge construction and maintenance and replacement. Now the questions that have been raised about the transferability, frankly, I am really troubled that in the last 5 years, States have transferred $5 billion out of their bridge account and then turn around and complain that they don't have flexibility. We give them flexibility to transfer up to 50 percent of their bridge account into other programs. But then they turn around and complain that this legislation will restrain their flexibility. I'm saying, as long as we have this bridge category, as long as there is a definition of structural deficiency, that States should address those structure deficiency issues, those structurally deficient bridges and if they are candidates for replacement, replace them. Use your bridge formula funds to replace those bridges. And then when you have done that and certified to the Federal Highway Administration you have addressed this, then you can transfer those funds elsewhere.

Mr. OBERSTAR. How much time do we have on our side?

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The amendment makes technical corrections to the bill. It clarifies that the Department of Transportation should consult with States when establishing a process for assigning risk-based priorities for bridge reconstruction and rehabilitation. We want to make sure that the Federal Government is consulting with, taking the best advice and best ideas from all of the States in crafting the risk-based program for evaluation of bridges. The Federal Government should not be doing this on its own. Our intention from the very outset was that this should be a cooperative program as the Federal aid highway program always has been, and this language makes it very clear that the department must consult with the States. It defines complex bridges for purposes of addressing qualifications for managers and team leaders. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBERSTAR. The gentleman's amendment is a very good one, and an important outcome to the endeavor to raise the standards to evaluate bridges and maintain bridges and replace bridges. I think it is important for us to adopt this amendment and to direct the Government Accountability Office to provide recommendations on how successful aspects of bridge-rating systems can be incorporated into the bridge- rating program and be a valuable asset for us next year as we go into the authorization process. Bridge rating is a very complex process. It will be very useful for us to have GAO's input on better ways of rating bridges, ensuring that the traveling public has a complete understanding of the condition of the bridges on which they are traveling. This does not mean that we can define away the condition of bridges, but rather that we better understand the condition of bridges. Under current Federal law, long-standing law, States are required to inspect all bridges longer than 20 feet at least once every 2 years and then to report those findings to the Federal Highway Administration. In the course of the inspection, conditions on various elements of the bridge are rated on a scale of zero, failure, to nine, excellent. ``Structurally deficient'' bridge means there are elements that need to be monitored or repaired or that the bridge entirely needs to be replaced. Now this current rating system, as the gentleman from Florida said, when a bridge is rated structurally deficient doesn't mean it is going to fall down tomorrow or the next day, but that under various conditions it could well be unsafe. And if it is ultimately determined to be unsafe, that structure should be closed. We should have a rating system, but that rating system has not been evaluated in probably 25 years, certainly not since I held those hearings in 1987. I think the amendment before us will put GAO on the course of doing that evaluation and giving us a better yardstick of measurement for determining various conditions of bridges. I look forward to the work to be done by GAO on both structural and functional deficiency rating systems for our Nation's bridges. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. I thank the distinguished gentleman from the Committee on Ways and Means, whom we all admire and revere for his civil rights leadership. And we're delighted that he is bringing this legislation to the floor. I certainly appreciate the fiscal concern expressed by the distinguished gentleman from Louisiana, Madam Speaker. He's right in this sense, that we have a long-term problem in the highway trust fund. And we're going to address that issue next year in the authorization of the Surface Transportation bill that the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure will bring through committee and to the House floor in good order, well before the expiration date of the current law. But meanwhile, there is a short-term problem. In 1998, when I think everybody I see on the floor who was serving in the House at that time, voted for what we affectionately know as TEA- 21, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, to put firewalls around the highway trust fund to ensure that those revenues would be invested in transportation and not held back in reserve to make deficits look smaller, as had been done from the time of President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to 1998. As part of the agreement worked out by then chairman of our committee, Bud Shuster, with House Republican leadership, the Speaker, the Appropriations Committee, the Budget Committee, and on our side with the Clinton administration, we agreed to give up $29 billion of surplus in the highway trust fund for long-term debt reduction and short-term deficit reduction, and also to give up interest paid on revenues deposited in the highway trust fund from the collections every 3 months--as is the practice--it would give that interest up as well. Eight billion dollars was transferred to make the deficit look smaller, and the rest went to long-term debt reduction. At the time, we had not only a balanced budget, but a budget in surplus. The prospects for the economy were shining. It was a rising economy. There were revenues galloping into the highway trust fund. But the economy has taken a bad turn. It has taken a bad turn on the backs of the cornerstone of the highway trust fund, which is the highway user fee. And for the first time since 1956, the establishment of the highway trust fund and the Interstate Highway Program, we have seen a decline in----

Mr. OBERSTAR. We have seen a decline in vehicle miles traveled. And that has meant a leveling off of revenues into the highway trust fund. We need this temporary adjustment to prevent a longer term shortfall in the highway trust in which the Association of Highway and State Transportation Officials said could be a $14 billion cut in Federal highway funding in the next year. Now, we already have 8.2 percent unemployment in the building trades, 785,000 construction workers are out of work today. If you think the housing situation is bad, this will be worse if we have a huge hole in the highway trust fund. I assure my very sincere and genuine colleague from Louisiana, who has been a very fiscally responsible person, that this is a long-term, fiscally responsible action that we're taking here to close the hole in the highway trust fund, give us a little breathing space until next year, and come back with a longer term solution.