That's a common topic here, yes, though honestly I rarely hear about a bridge collapse. I don't actually remember the last time I saw news of a bridge or overpass collapse that wasn't causes by damage like this.

Makes me want to find the data now. I don't actually known if our bridges are too old, poorly maintained and falling apart early, or if the whole topic is just herd mentality and politics.

>I don't actually remember the last time I saw news of a bridge or overpass collapse that wasn't causes by damage like this.

Fern Hollow Bridge Mk. II?

If we count pedestrian overpasses as part of overpass; FIU pedestrian overpass.

Among the more spectacular recent US bridge failures was the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, which failed during rush hour with bumper-to-bumper traffic with a loss of 13 lives on 1 August 2007: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge>

There's a list of many more failures at Wikpedia, though international in scope:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures>

There are a number of ship-bridge collisions listed, as well as fuel-tanker explosions, which seems to be a surprisingly common failure mode.

Also numerous failures in China, though how much of that is simply a scale effect I can't say.

The boom of bridges after automobiles became common are all running out of time. Yet, paying for a replacement early is also wasteful.

So it's an issue, but those bridges where also constructed by a far poorer nation so it's not that big a deal.

> but those bridges where also constructed by a far poorer nation

That's a must more interesting question when discussing the topic of infrastructure.

Sure we've created a lot more money in the last 50 years, but we've also lost a lot of domestic manufacturing. When it comes to something as vital as roads and bridges are we poorer when we have less paper money or when we are less independent in the manufacturing and maintenance of them?

Money is a side issue people are generally a lot more productive than we where 50 years ago and the US population is 50% larger. That means the government has a lot more resources to work with though how it spends them is another question.

I think people feel poorer because income inequality increased so much. New homes are huge because new home buyers are the upper end of the wealth curve. Same deal with cars etc. Stuff that targets everyone like normal sized TV's ends up being extremely cheap because revealed preferences show people buy cheap when it's an option.

> Money is a side issue people are generally a lot more productive than we where 50 years ago and the US population is 50% larger

Production per capita may have gone up, but that's (a) likely measuring productivity in financial terms and (b) heavily correlated with an increase in natural resource consumption, especially fossil fuels.

If we want to consider ourselves richer because we are able and willing to use more natural resources today could lead down a dark (and very hot) road.

Fossil fuel consumption in the US is down way down especially on a per person basis because of improved efficiency and cheaper alternatives. There's more Americans today, but in many ways we are consuming fewer resources while still being better off.

Compare a modern jet with one from the 1974 and sure many passengers have less leg room but it's hauling both people and 3rd party cargo while still using far less than 1/2 the fuel per passenger mile. Such improvements really add up and include things like engineered lumber using fast growth pines.

Look at the most popular car 50 years ago and you'll see the Ford Pinto. It's slow, unsafe, tiny, time consuming to maintain, fuel inefficient, and missing modern amenities but it was affordable. Inflation adjusted it's roughly the cost of a Mitsubishi Mirage which while better in just about every way is a rough equivalent the reason people are buying crossovers rather than the Mirage today is because people just have more wealth in real terms.

When you say it is "down way down", how much is that exactly?

The data I found only goes back to 1965 [1], but from the absolute peak in the 70s to today we've reduced per capita use by around 30%. Over the last 20 years we've reduced it by around 15%, going back 10 years and the reduction is only around 5%. Time scale matters a lot here, as does a definition of what "way downdowm" would mean in real % reductions.

I totally agree we've made use of oil more efficient in things like engine efficiency. We've also found more uses for oil byproducts, which can be good or bad depending on your opinion (and again, on your time scale). If we've improved fuel efficiency by 50% and at best reduced fossil fuel per capita by 30%, we've squandered some of those gains by using more oil for other things.

Whether that's a good or bad thing is really up to opinion, goals one has in mind, and how one weighs the trade offs.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-per-capita

At this scale even 10% is a big drop, down by 1/3 is IMO down way down.

That chart gives 31% in 49 years 63,836 in 2022 vs 92,635 in 1973, but the numbers are dropping faster each year.

>That means the government has a lot more resources to work with though how it spends them is another question.

it's not that clear-cut. regulations regarding construction are many times more strict, as well employment restrictions and safety code.

I mean, the things like the transcontinental railroad were built with what would largely be considered inhumanely treated human slaves by today standards -- that kind of 'advantageous hiring condition' thankfully no longer exists.

Stuff like that plus millions of other regulatory nuances that drive the cost of development to be many times more expensive than during the bad old 'wild west' make these kind of value analysis gapped by many years near impossible.

The transcontinental railroad was built without modern heavy equipment. Today fewer people can get a lot more work done even with humane working conditions and modern safety code. Which helps explain humane working conditions and modern safety code.

As to regulations, in 2023 an I-95 bridge failed after a gasoline tanker truck fire. They took 12 days to get a temporary replacement that got traffic flowing again. You occasionally see such projects where we need a fix now and then it happens. However, it was a temporary replacement and they needed an actual long term solution.

The difference between such rapid projects and more typical ones include time consuming steps to preventing dirt from settling and causing problems in the future etc. Regulations are filled with such tradeoffs, but that doesn't mean we're unable to move more quickly just that we can afford to do something else.

Money is just a proxy for power, so “poorer” means not able to do something. Note that you are referring to “we” being poorer, and a country’s ability to do (or get) something is not the same as an individual within the country’s ability to do something.