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You just watched 80 million dollars put to work.
That's the old Savanna-Sabula bridge
being imploded to make way for the band new
Dale Gardner Veteran's Memorial Bridge.
And while people in Savanna loved the old bridge,
it was an icon of the town, showing up
on everything from storefronts to t-shirts,
well, it was old. 85 years old.
It was built as a public works project in 1932
and it was built to 1932 standards:
it was only 20 feet wide, it didn't have guardrails when it was originally built,
and it was grated, so in the winter when they would try to salt the bridge
the salt would just fall through to the river below.
Youtubers who filmed themselves crossing this bridge just call it "Scary Bridge."
The Illinois Department of Transportation had been petitioning to replace the bridge
since 2012, when an inspection declared the bridge "structurally deficient."
But it took years of work to get the funding to finally begin construction at the end of 2016.
And the new bridge is beautiful!
But you're gonna have to wait to cross it.
That's because a connecting bridge on the Iowa side that was also slated to be replaced
was found to have started sinking, and the entire stretch of highway was closed.
See, that's the thing about infrastructure spending:
you're always going to wind up spending the money eventually,
but if you only spend it at the last minute in emergency situations
well, you wind up paying more to rush construction and adapt to the situation.
And while 80 million dollars may sound like a lot,
it's a drop in the bucket compared to what Illinois needs.
Civil engineers estimate that we need 2 billion dollars a year just for upkeep on our infrastructure,
but if we could put in 4 billion dollars a year every year for 10 years
we could actually raise our infrastructure levels to "satisfactory."
And that would be huge because right now we're getting a C minus in infrastructure.
Which is slightly better than the D minus national average,
but it's still nothing to write home about.
A 40 billion dollar capital plan is a big ask.
But infrastructure spending is the truest form of investment a community can get,
and not just because it creates construction jobs.
Savanna is a tourism town.
Its economy relies on the 2,000 cars that cross that bridge daily.
What's more, the fill from the construction of the new bridge is being repurposed
into expanded park land along the Mississippi River.
And scrap metal from the old bridge is being used to make sculptures for a new river walk in Savanna.
It's an incredible opportunity for renewal for a town that has struggled
likes so many towns up and down the Mississippi.
Hopefully, we'll be seeing a lot more of this in the future:
If you want to learn more about capital bills
and hear from people who were at the scene of the Savanna bridge implosion,
be sure to subscribe to our Best People podcast.