In New York, everyone knows the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE). Not far from Manhattan Island, this stretch of two-story highway, 650 meters long and offering a clear view of the East River below, is one of the most dangerous in America. Built in 1954, the BQE, where 150,000 vehicles circulate every day, is at the end of its life: its metal beams, eaten away by rainwater and sea salt, are cracking. And, according to engineers, a disaster comparable to that of the bridge in Genoa, Italy, in 2018 – 43 dead – could occur any time after 2025. However, for the moment, no preventive measures have been considered, lack of agreement between the city and the state of New York …
The BQE is just one example among many, illustrating a reality far removed from the image of a triumphant America, with its slender skyscrapers, its high-tech Silicon Valley or causeways Impeccable (expressways) in Miami. In fact, behind this “Potemkin facade”, the United States is a worm-eaten country, where airports are obsolete, roads riddled with potholes, power stations out of age. With the intention of making an impact on history and spirits, the 46th President of the United States, whose mandate will reach one hundred days on April 30, intends to put an end to this great dilemma.
45,000 failed bridges
Declining his slogan “Build back better“, Joe Biden has launched a very ambitious program to repair bridges, roads, interchanges, schools, hospitals, power plants, dams, pipes, river banks. The whole, estimated at 2,250 billion dollars, also includes the improvement of care for the disabled, the elderly and the development of green energies. In short, a colossal investment plan, the most ambitious since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society in the sixties. Better late than never…
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It’s urgent. In total, nearly 45,000 bridges out of a total of 616,000 are failing, according to the Federal Highway Administration. About 1,600 of them received a score of … 0 out of 9 for the condition of their deck or their superstructures! Along the Mississippi, for example, 355 structures have been completely closed to traffic, so much their dilapidation gives rise to fear of the worst. That’s not all. The mayors of a hundred municipalities bathed by this river are calling on the White House for help, because the dramatic floods of 2019 washed away networks of dikes. And they don’t have the financial means to fix them. These elected officials are therefore calling for a “systemic solution” which includes the draining of marshy areas and the creation of artificial retention lakes.
Further north last November, floods also destroyed two poorly maintained dams in Edenville and Sanford, Michigan. Across the country, the majority of the 91,000 existing dams, more than half a century old, no longer offer sufficient guarantees in the event of torrential rains – 15,600 of them are considered dangerous by the Association of State Dam Safety Officials …
Disadvantaged communities, the first victims
Tropical cyclones, storms, forest fires, droughts, cold snaps: in the space of a decade, no less than 119 major natural disasters have cost the country $ 810.5 billion in damage and caused 5,217 deaths. In urban centers, where the water and gas pipes are in poor condition, disadvantaged communities are the first victims. Last January, a historic cold snap caused a two-and-a-half-week power outage in Texas. Balance sheet: 111 deaths. The same wave of polar cold, still in the South, revealed the dilapidation of the pipes of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, aggravating the tensions in the black districts. The cost of repairs is estimated at $ 2 billion … which the city does not have.
To remedy this great decrepitude, Joe Biden’s already famous Infrastructure Bill must be presented to Congress by July 4, the national holiday. “We need to build today’s equipment, and no longer just renovate yesterday’s,” said the president, whose popularity is on the rise (61%). Time is running out because, already, the legislative elections of midterms (mid-term), traditionally won by the opposition. For now, the president can count on a fragile majority in Congress and, above all, on the prospect of a strong economic rebound with growth estimated at 7% for the second half of 2021.
Joe Biden is determined to succeed where his predecessor failed. “Rather than soliciting the states and the cities, as foreseen by the plan of Trump in 2018, the new president supports the idea that the time has come for the federal government to show the way”, underlines Adie Tomer, expert in infrastructure at the Brookings Institution. “Biden dreams of heir to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, who have transformed the country in depth in a short period of time,” adds historian Michael Beschloss. Like his illustrious elders, the tenant of the White House indeed believes in the virtues of Keynesianism. He wants to restore the central role of the federal state in the American economy. “And this, in order to prove to China and the world that democracy works better than authoritarian models,” insists United States specialist Maya Kandel, associate researcher at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. Far from the image of a tired patriarch, Joe Biden seems to want to draw that of a strong president.
