President Barack Obama waves after speaking Tuesday at the Amazon Sorting Facility in Chattanooga, Tenn. The trip marked the president’s first visit to Chattanooga, where he spoke about job growth.
Safety officials would take a hard look at the thousands of bridges in the Chattanooga region under a proposal President Barack Obama outlined in a Scenic City speech on Tuesday.
As part of Obama’s two-pronged plan to lower corporate taxes and increase infrastructure spending, he highlighted Chattanooga’s ongoing U.S. 27 road-widening project as an example of what he’d like to encourage.
“Congress should pass my “Fix-It-First” plan to put people to work immediately on our most urgent repairs, like the 100,000 bridges that are old enough to qualify for Medicare,” Obama told attendees.
He’s got his work cut out for him. Bridges are expensive to repair, and some incorporate obsolete designs that are better off being torn down and rebuilt using modern construction methods.
In Hamilton County alone, 24 bridges have been deemed “structurally deficient,” and 89 other bridges are functionally obsolete, according to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation. In Bradley County, 13 of its 197 bridges are structurally deficient, and 36 are functionally obsolete.