35w Bridge

The infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” may never have been built, but the state of Alaska and Gov. Sarah Palin got to keep $233 million in ear marks anyways. Republican nominee John McCain connected that $233 million with the collapse of the 35W bridge on the campaign trail.

“Maybe the 200,000 people who cross that bridge every day would have been safer than spending $233 million of your tax dollars on a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it,” McCain said at a campaign stop last year in Ankeny, Iowa.

Both Rep. Jim Oberstar, D – Minn., and Rep. Keith Ellison, D – Minn., strongly criticized Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain for his remarks today that pork-barrel spending was to blame for the 35W bridge collapse .

As previously reported by Minnesota Monitor, McCain declared that “the bridge in Minneapolis didn’t collapse because there wasn’t [...]

Twin Cities residents feeling burned by Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto pen may now feel the sting of salt in their wounds as the community and victims of the bridge collapse continue to heal. Mixing politics and bridges is something the Pawlenty administration has condemned since the moment accusatory fingers were pointed in the aftermath of [...]

The Minnesota Department of Transportation has had visual evidence of damaged gusset plates on the 35W bridge for more than four years, according to a Star Tribune report. It appears that URS Corp., the company that MnDOT hired to look at the structural stability of the bridge, took the images for the department in the [...]

Congressman Jim Oberstar, Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, strongly objected to yesterday’s decision by the NTSB to not hold a public hearing on the collapse of the I-35W bridge. In a letter [pdf] obtained by Minnesota Monitor, Oberstar, D-Minn., chided National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark V. Rosenker for not being [...]