One big pothole’: Will Trump fix America’s decaying infrastructure?

Bridges and roads crumble. Capitol Hill is in stasis. As Trump prepares to announce an infrastructure plan in his state of the union address, can no one agree on anything?

David Smith
David Smith in Baltimore

Opened in 1940, the Governor Harry W Nice Memorial Bridge spans the Potomac river from southern Maryland to Virginia. A $765m plan to replace the narrow and aging bridge is expected to open in 2023.
She remembers first crossing the bridge as a girl in the 1950s. “My mother was scared to death because they had little metal balustrades you could see right through and it looked like you could crash over the edge,” Maria Estevez says. “They were scary. My mum would close her eyes when we crossed the bridge.”

Today the metal fencing has been replaced by concrete Jersey barriers but little else has changed on the Governor Harry W Nice Memorial Bridge since it opened in 1940, two years after President Franklin Roosevelt broke ground. Back then it was expected to carry 136,000 vehicles a year from southern Maryland to Virginia, but by 1964 traffic had reached 3.2m vehicles; today it stands at 6.5m.

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The 1.7-mile truss bridge cannot cope. It remains very narrow – just one worn, somewhat bumpy lane in either direction – and has an unnervingly steep climb and descent at its centre to allow tall boats to traverse the Potomac river. Tailbacks of four miles are common during the summer. “We all have a love-hate relationship with the bridge because of the back-ups,” added Estevez, 73, a secretary. “I have waited for two hours on a Friday night.”

There are plans for a $765m replacement – with two lanes in each direction and a bicycle and pedestrian path – to open in 2023. Until then, the Harry W Nice bridge will remain one more New Deal relic in a country where, if all structurally deficient bridges were laid end to end, they would stretch halfway from New York to Los Angeles. Airports, bridges, dams, levees, pipes, railways, roads and waterworks last year earned a D+ grade on the American Society of Civil Engineers’ infrastructure report card. The “shining city upon a hill” is rotting from within.