professor of civil and environmental engineering at carnegie mellon university. professor, good to see you. so, pittsburgh is a city of bridges. you live and work there. how likely in your view is it that this could happen again? well, i mean, we are a city of bridges, and, in fact, we are one of the largest going held to head with venice in terms of the number of bridges that we have. these bridges have been there for a long time. we do have aging infrastructure, and they re withstanding to multiple challenges multiple stresses like increased traffic, increased loads from the trucks as well as being able to deal with extreme conditions. and, you know, all have been good in terms of you know, no wonder it s a challenging environment for the bridges, but
today between 11:00 and 1:00 we will know whether it s huge or potentially epic. yeah. everyone needs to pay attention and be very, very careful with this. president biden heading to pittsburgh today. the steel city, city of bridges. he will be touting the infrastructure program that he signed into law last year, which includes a billion dollars for 3,000 bridges that are falling apart. cnn s jeff zeleny joining us now. wages are up. inflation is taking a bite out of that. what are pennsylvanians saying? what are they feeling? reporter: good morning, brianna. a sense of exhaustion awaits. overinflation, schools, politics in general among so many of the people we talked to, including those who voted for president biden and still believe in him. but others think he isn t getting the credit he deserves and wants to see him more as a fighter. still casting a shadow over so
vital artery for the city, the bridge s overall condition was rated poor. an inspection by the pennsylvania department of transportation last september. the city s fire chief said this collapse took everyone by surprise. we do have people go out and inspect the bridges. if there was any warning or concern, we would have been notified and we would have made sure that we didn t use this route. reporter: and were it not for poor weather conditions, it could have been very different. we were fortunate there was a public school delay and the traffic could have been much more pronounced. we re the city of bridges. and how many others are out there? reporter: and you can just make out the scene behind me here. you can see the red port authority bus. we re keeping our distance so we don t get in the way of first responders. the investigation into the cause of the collapse is just getting underway with the national transportation safety board
Developing alternative energy projects can mitigate the negative environmental impacts associated with the City's operations, save money over the long term, and demonstrate leadership in our community.