PD Editorial: Include the Golden Gate Bridge in federal infrastructure spending

The Golden Gate Bridge might not be eligible for federal funding to pay for needed seismic upgrades as the rules are written. If that’s right, the Department of Transportation needs to rewrite the rules.

The problem came to light in a letter from California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. At issue are $12.5 billion included in last year’s much-ballyhooed bipartisan infrastructure bill. The money is supposed to pay for projects that “replace, rehabilitate, preserve or protect” highway bridges.

It’s a lot of money, but not enough to fix all of America’s aging highway bridges. Projects therefore must apply for funding, and the best will get it — but probably not if they are for protecting against earthquakes.

The Transportation Department’s cost-benefit analysis method for picking winning applications disadvantages projects that promote seismic resiliency and prioritizes other types of disasters and structural risks.

The problem is that earthquakes are rare. Hurricanes, tornadoes and floods strike the United States every year. Feinstein and Padilla note in their letter that they won’t receive funding “because seismic events are rare in any single year despite their destructive nature and likelihood over several years.”

A major earthquake is overdue to strike the West Coast, but because it might not hit for decades, seismic retrofits are deemed less urgent than protecting against a flood that has a higher chance of happening in any given year.

That means that the Golden Gate Bridge, which is set to undergo a huge seismic upgrade, probably won’t get any of the federal infrastructure money through this program. Bridge officials hope to secure $870 million from state and federal sources to pay for the project.

Buttigieg and the Transportation Department should revise their formula to treat earthquakes like other threats. They don’t deserve more consideration, but they also don’t deserve less.

When a major earthquake strikes — and it is a question of “when” not “if” — it will cause widespread devastation. Bay Area residents remember the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, which caused a portion of the Bay Bridge to collapse, disrupting traffic for months.

When the Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, its builders and designers did not have a modern understanding of seismic risk and reinforcement. Today, a bridge can be built to withstand earthquakes, and an old bridge can be retrofitted. It just takes the will and the money.

If a major earthquake does strike, the Golden Gate could provide necessary connectivity in the aftermath. People may need to evacuate. Emergency assistance will need to get in.

After recovery is underway and life begins to return to normal, the Golden Gate Bridge will resume its usual role as a critical transportation route. About 40 million vehicles cross between San Francisco and the North Bay annually. If those vehicles must take a route around the bay, the costs would be tremendous in both wasted time and money as well as environmental wear from increased emissions.

Major infrastructure bills with the sort of money to help pay for a seismic upgrade are few and far between. Let’s not leave a global icon and American monument vulnerable to avoidable damage because Transportation Department bureaucrats didn’t think earthquakes were a big enough threat. Let’s preserve and protect it now so that we don’t have to replace or rehabilitate it later.

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