There’s this old parody article from The Onion, the satirical online newspaper, where a woman complains: “Why isn’t anyone doing anything about all the problems?”
We’ve all had those moments of frustration, encountering yet another of life’s little obstacles and wishing somebody would do something to help. But there might be no greater source of that exasperation than the inconveniences we encounter when we’re just trying to get from one place to another.
I still vividly remember driving around St. Louis Park years ago, a young mom with two boys in tow and lots of places to be. Like now, getting almost anywhere in that part of the state meant getting on Highway 12. But back then, the road was way too narrow for the amount of traffic that used it, not to mention frequently in disrepair. Which meant I spent a lot of time sitting in the station wagon waiting out one pointless traffic jam after another.
This is insane, I’d think to myself as my blood pressure spiked and the boys threw snacks at each other in the back seat. Just fix the damn road!
The thing is, we all have a Highway 12 in our daily routines: a road that’s desperately needed paving for years, or an intersection that always feels terrifyingly unsafe, or a bus route that’s always running behind schedule. These tiny inconveniences add up, day after day, until we find ourselves at our wits’ end, swearing under our breath at whoever’s job it was supposed to be to fix all these problems.
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And it’s not just about convenience — it’s about safety. Too many accidents are caused not by unsafe drivers, but by unsafe roads. A big part of my job is traveling around Minnesota, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found myself on a four-lane rural road, with cars going 60 miles an hour in both directions, needing to make a left turn against traffic and white-knuckling the steering wheel the whole time. I keep thinking about a school bus or a car full of teenagers or someone just off a midnight shift having to do the same.
For all the work we do in the Senate every day, I often wish we could do a better job of connecting to people’s real-life problems. I know that, back when I was living in St. Louis Park, I certainly wasn’t obsessing over the kinds of ideological conflicts that feature on cable news shows. I just wanted someone to fix Highway 12!
That brings me to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which is the Fancy Washington Name for the big bipartisan infrastructure bill President Biden signed into law a couple months back. You might have heard that this bill represents the largest long-term investment in our nation’s infrastructure and competitiveness in nearly a century, or about all the good-paying union jobs economists say it will create. And all that good stuff is true.
But I’m especially proud to have helped usher this bill into law because, at its heart, it’s really about fixing the problems you encounter every day.
Minnesota has more than 600 bridges and nearly 5,000 miles of highway in poor condition, and behind every busted bridge or road are whole lot of unnecessary accidents waiting to happen, not to mention a whole bunch of people waiting in traffic. The infrastructure bill will bring in nearly $5 billion in federal aid over the next five years: enough to rebuild countless miles of roads and bridges like Interstate 494 over the Minnesota River in the Metro, Highway 61 over the Pigeon River along the North Shore, and four bridges over 94 in Douglas County.
Zoom in on just a small slice of Rochester and you can see the transformational impact this bill will have on our local communities. Travelers on Highway 14 could see an expanded, safer road, while folks downtown will be able to get around on Rochester’s first major bus rapid transit line. Meanwhile, Minnesotans will be flying in and out of a revamped airport, with Rochester International already receiving nearly $2 million for upgrades and repairs.
We’re also getting $68 million to expand Minnesota’s network of charging stations for electric vehicles — maybe one will be put in near your home or workplace, making that American-made EV you’ve had your eye on a realistic option for the first time.
If you don’t drive, you’ve probably encountered a bus or a train that, like 11 percent of transit vehicles in Minnesota, is in desperate need of replacement because it’s past its useful life. There’s good news for you, too: Minnesota’s going to get more than $800 million to improve public transportation. That means newer, safer buses and more on-time arrivals.
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Speaking of on-time, there’s no worse place to be delayed than an airport, and our nation’s outdated airports are responsible for all kinds of delays and other inconveniences. That’s why the bill also includes nearly $300 million to upgrade our air infrastructure — not just at MSP, but at the regional airports that are such important connections for Greater Minnesota families and businesses.
Upgrading our transportation infrastructure is going to eliminate a lot of inconveniences, create a lot of jobs, and prevent a lot of accidents. But this new law does even more.
For example: Right now, as many as 10 million American households and 400,000 schools and child care centers lack safe drinking water. That isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a health crisis. The infrastructure law is going to get rid of lead service pipes and make sure that every single American family has access to clean water.
There’s funding to clean up Superfund sites that have just been sitting there for years, making our neighborhoods less beautiful and leeching pollution into our air and water. There’s funding to make our power grid more resilient so fewer people will lose electricity when there’s a big storm. There’s funding for flood protection, including funding to finish the Army Corps of Engineers project designed to control the Red River during major flood events so Fargo-Moorhead can breathe a little easier.
There’s even funding to fix one of the most obnoxious problems anyone could face: a bad internet connection. It’s insane that, in 2022, tens of thousands of Minnesotans don’t have access to broadband — but that’s going to change, thanks to the infrastructure law.
Will this new law fix “all the problems”? No. But it will make a direct and immediate impact in nearly everyone’s lives, including yours. It’s exactly the kind of thing Washington ought to spend more time working on — and exactly the kind of thing I went to the Senate to get done.
Tina Smith is a U.S. Senator representing Minnesota. She previously was lieutenant governor and was the first chairwoman of Rochester's Destination Medical Center Board.
