Kaine, Warner press Trump White House to repair Arlington Memorial Bridge

Virginia’s senators are urging the incoming administration to fulfill President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to repair the nation’s crumbling infrastructure by starting with a key local project: the Arlington Memorial Bridge.

The structurally deficient bridge, which spans the Potomac River from D.C. to Arlington, Va., will be closed to all vehicle traffic during Inauguration Day on Friday due to weight limits that have been imposed in recent years.

In a letter to Trump’s nominees to lead the Interior and Transportation departments, Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner urged the new administration to make securing funding for the bridge a top priority. They called the bridge “a vital, yet dilapidated, artery for our nation’s capital.”

{mosads}“We request that you do all in your power to see that the rehabilitation of Memorial Bridge is fully funded,” wrote Warner and Kaine, the former Democratic vice presidential candidate. “Designed to be an ‘Avenue of Heroes’ and celebrate the reunification of the nation following the Civil War, the bridge is adorned by statues dedicated to valor and sacrifice. Memorial Bridge is not only a national memorial, but a critical multimodal link in the national capital region’s transportation network.”

The bridge, which is marred by decaying steel, crumbling concrete and peeling paint, is considered one of the most vulnerable structures in the federal system.

Although the Department of Transportation recently awarded the project a $90 million federal “FASTLANE” grant, the bridge needs a total of $250 million in repairs or else officials estimate that it will be forced to close in the next five years.

“Without additional funding, however, Memorial Bridge will be forced to spend millions of dollars in the coming years for emergency repairs and will still face permanent closure if full rehabilitation is not achieved,” warned Kaine and Warner.

About 68,000 vehicles pass over the bridge every day. Park service officials have emphasized that the bridge is continually checked and is currently safe to drive on.

But the bridge will close without significant additional funding, which would cost local governments $168,000 per day, or $75 million per year, according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

Transportation advocates have been cautiously optimistic about Trump’s pledge to usher a massive infrastructure bill through Congress, with Democrats identifying the issue as one of the few areas of compromise in the new administration.

So far, Trump has floated a proposal that would offer $137 billion in federal tax credits to private firms that back transportation projects. But some critics say that private-sector dollars would only help projects that can recoup their investments costs through tolls or user fees, meaning some critical infrastructure needs would go neglected.

“We’d be willing to talk about an infrastructure bill,” Pelosi said during a news conference Friday, “as long as it’s a real infrastructure bill that rebuilds the infrastructure of America, creates good-paying jobs, increases the paycheck of American workers and is not a tax break at the high-end, disguised as an infrastructure bill.”