Federal bridge inspectors have ordered scores of local bridges closed throughout Mississippi beginning late last year and continuing into this year. Marion County has closed multiple bridges, including one with significant traffic flow on the south end of Williamsburg Road.
It’s a result of the self-inflicted crisis created by the legislature, which is scared of offending anti-tax fanatics so it just keeps doing nothing about a gas tax that doesn’t generate enough money to keep roads and bridges up to par.
That’s despite plaintive pleas by the state’s top industries to raise the gas tax an estimated 10 cents to 15 cents per gallon, which is what’s required to maintain our state’s fine transportation system of four-lane highways and bridges. Each day that goes by without action, the infrastructure worsens and the cost to fix it grows.
With no progress on that front in the past several legislative sessions, some conspiracy theorists have said that the federal inspections were ordered by supporters of the gas tax to focus public attention more intensely on the issue. Whether that’s true or not — it very well could be; we put nothing beyond the behind-the-scenes plotting of Mississippi politics — it has worked out that way. The public, for the first time, seems to be aware of the gravity of the situation and willing to do something to address it.
But what has been missed in all this discussion is this: What about state bridges that are in dangerous condition? So far, the only bridges that have been closed in Marion County, for example, are local bridges, which tend to have much lower traffic counts than bridges maintained by the state.
Yet two Marion County supervisors have pointed out that two state bridges on South High School Avenue in Columbia are in worse shape than any bridges that the county has been forced to close. The state has plans to replace them by 2020, but for now they remain open.
“I don’t think it’s fair for them to hold us to their regulations and then they not do it themselves,” Supervisor Raymon Rowell said. “The bridge has a lot of traffic. I’ve got pilings that are in much better shape than these that they are saying are not good.”
He has a good point. If the true reason for immediately closing county bridges is the safety of drivers, then the same standards should be applied to state bridges. If the true reason for immediately closing county bridges is building political support for a gas tax increase, then shutting down some heavily traveled state roads will make that point nicely.
Either way, the same rules should be used for everyone.
— Charlie Smith
