I bet you have heard that the nations bridges are in need of repair. Oregon is in a similar situation but has faired a bit better than the rest of the nation, although that is not saying much. Oregon has 7,259 bridges and 456 of those are not structurally sound. Oregon spends more money on bridge repair than the rest of the country, and even less on new structures that is why Oregon is at the top of the list for repairs, but even what Oregon spends is not sufficient.



Oregon's Sellwood Bridge is just about to fall down; even though the bridge does not have a huge volume of traffic it is still a serious concern for those travelers who must cross the bridge. There are other higher traffic bridges in Oregon that are in serious need of structural repairs. Five of the ten bridges that are in most need of repair are in Multnomah County ranging the worst, 139,800 daily traffic to about 36,000 per day traffic.

People are always reluctant to pay more taxes but people need to realize that we use our roads and bridges every single day and we should understand that it cost money to keep these structures up and safe. We should spend the money for repairs or new structures instead of waiting for an accident to happen before we do anything. The repair or building of new structures would be money well spent in this economy; it would provide thousands of jobs to many people in many different occupations. I would rather spend the money where it would do the greater good than bail out wall street, or give huge tax breaks to the rich or even allow corporations to pay no taxes at all.

Our infrastructure has not been updated for 60+ years and the time has come for all Americans to bite the bullet and start investing in our infrastructure, which is our future.