Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh
Infrastructure
Fig. 1. Post-collapse scene at the Fern Hollow Bridge, photograph by National Transportation Safety Board, January 29, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
On Wednesday (February 1), Pittsburgh closed the Charles Anderson Bridge, a bridge along Boulevard of the Allies leading into Schenley Park, for safety reasons.[1] Among other things, so goes the story, it emerged that Mayor Ed Gainey had delayed funding to repair the fucking bridge.[2]
Mr. [Ed] Gainey’s predecessor, Bill Peduto, had planned to spend $6 million on the project this year, according to the 2022 capital budget, passed in the last year of Mr. Peduto’s administration. But Mr. Gainey’s 2023 capital budget now lists that $6 million being spent in 2024, and allocates no money for the bridge project this year.[3]
Gainey, who didn’t answer questions Wednesday, now says that the $6 million had never actually been allocated but merely projected.[4] The question remains: Where the fuck did the money go?[5]
[Ed Gainey] noted that state and federal funding, which pays for the vast majority of building and maintaining infrastructure, runs through the Southwest Pennsylvania Commission, a 10-county cooperative that allocates the money to projects throughout the region.
The commission moved the project back to 2027, with bids scheduled to go out in September 2025, according to Mr. [Ed] Gainey’s statement.
As mayor of Pittsburgh, Mr. Gainey sits on the commission’s executive committee, along with top elected leaders from the 10 counties.
Local leaders can lobby the commission to fund their projects, but they compete for a limited pool of money, said Paul Leger, who served as finance director for Mr. [Bill] Peduto.[6]
So now the Southwest Pennsylvania Commission are the bad guys, despite Paul Leger’s charitable claim that “[t]hey don’t have infinite amounts of money, so they can give local jurisdictions only what they’ve got. It’s not that they’re being mean — they just can’t do it.”[7] Because really, the question still is, Where the fuck did the money go?[8]
During the entire five-year time frame of the Southwest Pennsylvania Commission’s current infrastructure funding plan, just 11 of the city’s poorly rated bridges are scheduled to receive any funding at all. The remaining 21 aren’t mentioned.[9]
The most charitable interpretation, presuming extreme gullibility, here is that Pittsburgh mayors are getting rolled, because nobody else in southwestern Pennsylvania has infrastructure failing at the rate that Pittsburgh’s is. Nobody.
Mike Wereschagin, “Mayor Gainey denies that Pittsburgh delayed funding for the crumbling Charles Anderson Bridge,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 3, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/02/02/charles-anderson-memorial-bridge-repair-funding-ed-gainey/stories/202302020115
So-called ‘ridesharing’
Drivers
Fig. 1. Yeah, this is me. The sign says, “If you’re whining about a labor shortage, STOP ignoring my job applications!” And the QR-code leads here. Photograph by author, January 16, 2023.
So, after yesterday’s unplanned off time, I’ll be off to work a bit early today. I haven’t heard from Lyft yet—as I recall, they usually take a bit longer than this—so it’ll probably be with Uber.
- [1]Julia Felton, “Pittsburgh officials closing Charles Anderson Memorial Bridge because of safety concerns,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, February 1, 2023, https://triblive.com/local/pittsburgh-officials-closing-charles-anderson-memorial-bridge-because-of-safety-concerns/; Mike Wereschagin, “Pittsburgh closes Charles Anderson Bridge in Oakland to vehicles after inspection shows it needs repairs,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 1, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/02/01/pittsburgh-charles-anderson-bridge-closure-oakland-squirrel-hill-greenfield/stories/202302010090↩
- [2]Mike Wereschagin, “Pittsburgh closes Charles Anderson Bridge in Oakland to vehicles after inspection shows it needs repairs,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 1, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/02/01/pittsburgh-charles-anderson-bridge-closure-oakland-squirrel-hill-greenfield/stories/202302010090↩
- [3]Mike Wereschagin, “Mayor Gainey denies that Pittsburgh delayed funding for the crumbling Charles Anderson Bridge,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 3, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/02/02/charles-anderson-memorial-bridge-repair-funding-ed-gainey/stories/202302020115↩
- [4]Mike Wereschagin, “Mayor Gainey denies that Pittsburgh delayed funding for the crumbling Charles Anderson Bridge,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 3, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/02/02/charles-anderson-memorial-bridge-repair-funding-ed-gainey/stories/202302020115↩
- [5]David Benfell, “Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, the flim-flam artist,” Irregular Bullshit, February 1, 2023, https://disunitedstates.com/2023/02/01/pittsburgh-mayor-ed-gainey-the-flim-flam-artist/↩
- [6]Mike Wereschagin, “Mayor Gainey denies that Pittsburgh delayed funding for the crumbling Charles Anderson Bridge,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 3, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/02/02/charles-anderson-memorial-bridge-repair-funding-ed-gainey/stories/202302020115↩
- [7]Paul Leger, quoted in Mike Wereschagin, “Mayor Gainey denies that Pittsburgh delayed funding for the crumbling Charles Anderson Bridge,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 3, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/02/02/charles-anderson-memorial-bridge-repair-funding-ed-gainey/stories/202302020115↩
- [8]David Benfell, “Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, the flim-flam artist,” Irregular Bullshit, February 1, 2023, https://disunitedstates.com/2023/02/01/pittsburgh-mayor-ed-gainey-the-flim-flam-artist/↩
- [9]Mike Wereschagin, “Mayor Gainey denies that Pittsburgh delayed funding for the crumbling Charles Anderson Bridge,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 3, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/02/02/charles-anderson-memorial-bridge-repair-funding-ed-gainey/stories/202302020115↩