July 30, 2019 10:00 a.m.
Oregon U.S. Senator Ron Wyden is part of a group senators that announced Monday that they have secured a $3.25 billion investment for bridge repairs in a highway package set to pass this week in the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Wyden along with Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, got their Bridge Investment Act included in the package. A release from Wyden said the legislation would establish a competitive grant program to assist the repair and replacement of deficient and outdated bridges to ease the national bridge repair backlog. The new program includes multi-year grants for large bridge projects. All projects funded by the bill would be required to use American-made steel and iron. The release said the package is expected to be a component of a larger surface transportation bill.
A report released by the American Road and Transportation Builders in April, found that the pace of bridge repair has slowed, despite the fact that more than 47,000 bridges in the U.S. are “structurally deficient” and in need of urgent repairs, according to the release. The report estimates it would take more than 80 years to repair those bridges at the current pace.
Wyden noted that over half of the bridges in Oregon are more than a century old. He said that makes Oregon, “particularly vulnerable”.