By Jared Hinderer

A drive from the knobs to Louisville really never was a big task. Take I64 down to the Sherman Minton, cross over and there you are; right in downtown Louisville. I would be there in 15 to 20 minutes tops, with smooth sailing the whole way. Well, that’s how it used to be at least.

Ever since bridge workers found a crack in the Sherman Minton we have to take a detour of several miles to either the Kennedy or 2nd Street bridge to get to Louisville. During rush hour, this makes 15 minute drive turn into an hour long drive, something that greatly angers people from Indiana that work in Derby City.

But finding this crack brings up a bigger problem to me. Are these bridges inspected often enough? Sure it’s great that they inspect these bridges every two years, but I do not think that is enough. Who is to say that crack didn’t start to form only six months after the last inspection? That means 80 thousand people could have been driving on a structurally unsafe bridge hundreds of feet above the Ohio every day for a year and a half.

Even if bridges were inspected every year, instead of every two, that means we could catch problems earlier before they become a big enough problem to cause a shut down.

Furthermore, America could use situations like this help improve the economy.

If we work to improve our infrastructure, that means more jobs. More jobs means helping fix our major job crisis.

Infrastructure is the backbone of America, and we let that fail, we all might as well plunge into the river with it.