What better spokesman than Gov. Rendell to sound the rallying cry for more federal aid in averting tragedies like the Minneapolis bridge collapse?
Under Rendell's leadership, Pennsylvania has made major strides toward raising its own war chest to fix roads and bridges, and support mass transit.
The Harrisburg deal hammered out last year to boost transportation funding gave Rendell all the credibility he needed this week to call for the $140 billion in federal funding needed to repair the more than one-in-four deteriorating bridges.
On the first anniversary of the bridge disaster that took 13 lives, though, federal policymakers don't have much to show beyond a $1 billion congressional increase in highway funding - and even that amount is subject to a veto threat by President Bush.
Despite the widespread clamor for bridge repairs, the Associated Press reports that its review found no extra work done on two out of three of the busiest bridges in poor condition in each state.
Of course, Rendell and other activist governors realize that Washington probably won't send in the cavalry any time soon. With a costly war in Iraq, federal fiscal policy unfortunately grimly pits the risk of letting down our fighting forces against the risk of motorists plunging through the next collapsed bridge span.
From the governor's perspective, then, he has no choice but to push even harder to fill out the state's menu of funding for infrastructure repairs. Last year's Act 44 highway and transit initiative has yet to be fully funded - since it's contingent on the as-yet unapproved tolling of Interstate 80 across the state.
Even though Rendell is on record in support of the toll plan - which requires federal approval - his clear preference has been the alternative plan to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike. By not taking a stronger lead on the I-80 proposal, Rendell could undermine efforts to build support in Washington to get Transportation Secretary Mary Peters to approve the tolls on I-80.
The turnpike lease is controversial, politically unpopular in Harrisburg, and far more risky than any toll plan. While a Spanish-U.S. consortium is offering $12.8 billion for the turnpike lease, the state's return on investing the lease payments may be much less than predicted. There's no real confidence that Harrisburg could oversee the lease in the best interests of the motoring public, and the deal seems to favor New York port traffic over Philadelphia-bound cargo.
With a federal ruling on I-80 tolls possible in the next few weeks, Rendell's first order of business should be an all-out lobbying effort for the federal go-ahead. Tolling I-80 is the low-hanging fruit in terms of new funding for road and bridge repairs. To pass it up makes no sense.