President Joe Biden on Thursday visted the site of a bridge in Pittsburgh that collapsed just before he visited the area back in January.

The bridge is now being repaired on an accelerated timeline — an opportunity for the president to highlight his administration’s infrastructure investments just weeks before the midterms.

What You Need To Know

  • President Joe Biden on Thursday visited the site of a bridge in Pittsburgh that collapsed just before he visited the area back in January; the bridge is now being repaired on an accelerated timeline

  • It's an opportunity for the president to highlight his administration’s infrastructure investments just weeks before the midterms

  • Democratic Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman joined Biden at the Fern Hollow Bridge before the president later campaigns for him at a fundraiser

  • The bipartisan infrastructure law passed nearly a year ago has been a crowning achievement for Biden, and it includes $40 billion for bridges around the country

"On a snowy day, the bridge behind me collapsed 100 feet straight down to Fern Hollow, and five cars and a bus were crossing the bridge at the time. Several people were injured," Biden recounted on Thursday. "But by the grace of God, the school delayed that day because of snow and it was just before rush hour, so there was less traffic than usual. Had it been a normal day, it would have been much, much worse."

Thanks to the bipartisan infrastructure law signed by President Biden in November 2021, just a few months before the bridge collapsed, Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation was able to allocate $25.3 million in federal funds to reconstruction of the Fern Hollow bridge that otherwise would not have been as readily available. 

While the infrastructure law did not directly fund the repairs, which are getting done with PennDOT and federal funds, the White House said the law’s additional money “allowed PennDOT to move funds quickly to support this project, without having to slow down or interfere with other projects in the pipeline.”

“Without the new BIL funds, we would have been scrambling to find the money to quickly replace the Fern Hollow Bridge, and other important projects would have been impacted,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat who joined Biden at Thursday's event, wrote in a statement. “There’s no question that these new funds have been a gamechanger for Pennsylvania, not only for this project, but across the commonwealth."

Democratic Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman also joined Biden at the Fern Hollow Bridge, and the president will campaign for him at a fundraiser in Philadelphia on Thursday evening.

The bipartisan infrastructure law, passed nearly a year ago, has been a crowning achievement for Biden, and it includes $40 billion for bridges around the country. The bridge Biden visited Thursday is a “critical link,” the White House said, connecting eastern Pittsburgh neighborhoods; it was crossed by 21,000 vehicles per day before its collapse in January.

Biden on Thursday pointed to the bridge as a symbol of rebuilding. Its repairs and upgrades are expected to be done in December — less than a year after the collapse — compared to the typical repair timeline of two to five years for bridges.

"Pennsylvania has been able to repair Fern Hollow Bridge in less than a year, and by Christmas, God willing [...] I'm coming back to walk over this sucker," the president said, later adding: "This really matters."

The state received $353 million in the first tranche of bridge money released this year, out of $5.5 billion nationwide.

With that money, states and localities have started 2,400 bridge projects so far, exceeding Biden’s goal of 1,500 in the first year.

That includes key thoroughfares like the I-270 bridge over the Mississippi River, the Dare County Bridge that connects Roanoke Island to the mainland of North Carolina and is one of the longest bridges in the state and the I-65 bridge over the Sepulga River in Alabama.

In January, the Fern Hollow Bridge fell more than 100 feet into the ravine and hillsides below, and at the time was classified as in “poor condition.” There were 10 injuries, but no one was killed.

There are 45,000 bridges in the United States that are in poor condition, and Pennsylvania has the second highest number of bridges in the country.

According to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, 3,198 of Pennsylvania's 23,166 bridges are classified as "structurally deficient." While still representing just under 14% of the state's total bridges, that number is down over 22% from the 4,147 structurally deficient bridges in 2017.

"Pittsburgh's the city of bridges, but too many of them are in poor condition — like this bridge behind me before it collapsed," Biden said Thursday. "With the bipartisan infrastructure law, we're doing something about it."