August 15, 2007 – Imagine this: a highway bridge over a major river, in service for 39 years, suddenly collapses while full of afternoon rush hour traffic. A significant number of lives are lost. The White House and the Department of Transportation immediately order nationwide bridge inspections. The bridge collapse hits home for the chairman of a powerful Congressional committee that oversees the highway program, and he not only holds a series of hearings to draw attention to decaying bridges, he also introduces and eventually pushes through legislation establishing a special federal program to pay for bridge replacement.
Sound familiar? It happened almost 40 years ago, in 1967. The initial federal response to that bridge disaster was strikingly similar to what has happened thus far in response to the August 1 collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, and the lessons of the 1967 incident and the history of the resulting federal bridge programs may prove useful in the current debate.