Rep. Rick Larsen, WA-02, issued the following statement regarding the I-5 bridge collapse in Skagit County:
“I spoke this morning with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Secretary LaHood confirmed that the Department of Transportation has emergency funds available to aid repairs. The Department of Transportation has established an interagency task force to expedite the permitting process for the bridge repair.
“I updated House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) on the situation in Skagit County. I appreciate his commitment to help in any way that he can.
“Members of my staff have been at the scene since last night and are working from the Emergency Operations Center in Mount Vernon. My office is coordinating with local, state and federal officials as repairs are planned and executed.
“I applaud the excellent work of first responders who safely rescued the victims of this collapse. Local and state officials handled this incident professionally and efficiently.”
I heard the bridge has been renamed The Tim Eyman Memorial Bridge — thanks to all his initiatives, taxes have been cut drastically for maintenance on our roads.
For the equivalent of one latte a month our road tax system was gutted many years ago. But when you only think as far ahead as a month, that one latte is far more important than having a solid infrastructure.
Well said, Margie & Jim. Problem is we are where we are whether or not that’s where we want to be and fixing it at this late date is too painful.
On a brighter note: One of our returning guests arriving Saturday afternoon took our advice and left north bound Interstate 5 at Exit 221 and reported very light traffic, beautiful drive, relatively short wait on ferry and wondering why they hadn’t come that way before. Ah, the mother of necessity looking after her brood.
I don’t know, Margie–blaming Eyman for everything makes no more sense than the right blaming everything on the President. (I actually thought that Eyman had tried to keep the state from diverting trasnportation money to other categories?)
The State spends more than $70 BILLION dollars a biennium. Seems like there should be money somewhere in there for bridge monitoring and repair.
I started reading the current transportation budget, and there are lots of earmarked projects in there, plus lots of studies being funded–just nothing in the Skagit river area.
The mess that the floating bridge project has become is not inspiring confidence in the DOT. (I read that the state had failed to post the standard clearance sign on the bridge. If that’s so, it’s an even worse management problem.)