Pennsylvania’s Fuel Tax Is Supposed To Fund Bridge Repair. Billions Went to Cops Instead.

Pittsburgh’s Fern Hollow Bridge, which collapsed on Friday morning just hours before President Joe Biden visited the city to tout the passage of a $1.2 trillion federal funding package, provides an apt lesson about the real problem stalking America’s infrastructure.

It’s not a lack of money; it’s too much politics.

That’s not the lesson Biden offered, of course. Speaking later on Friday near the collapsed bridge, Biden said it was all about the money. “This is the first time in the country’s history we dedicated a national program to repair and upgrade bridges—and it’s about time,” Biden said, before promising that the recently passed bipartisan infrastructure package would provide enough funding to fix all of America’s 43,000 structurally deficient bridges. “We’re sending the money,” he said.

That’s somewhat dubious—the Fern Hollow Bridge had been rated in “poor condition” for years, but it was not on the list of projects due to be funded by the new infrastructure bill.

But the more serious issue here has nothing to do with the size of Biden’s infrastructure package. It has to do with poor budgeting and decision making by state and local governments, which are responsible for most roads and bridges in America.

Pennsylvania is a perfect example. Drivers in the state pay the nation’s third-highest gasoline tax (a tad over $0.58 cents per gallon), yet Pennsylvania’s roads are notorious for being in terrible shape and the state has the second-most structurally deficient bridges in the country.- READ MORE