President Joe Biden visited Pittsburgh on Friday, hours after a bridge collapse that injured at least 10 people. Biden was already scheduled to visit the Steel City to make remarks at Mill 19 about his recently passed bipartisan infrastructure bill.
“It’s incredible,” Biden said while visiting the site of the collapse. “I didn’t realize there are literally more bridges in Pittsburgh than in any other city in the world. Did you know? More than in Venice.”
“We’re going to — they’re going to fix them all,” Biden told first responders and local officials at the bridge site. “This is going to be a gigantic change. And there’s 43,000 nationwide. And we’re sending the money.”
The 1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill includes $550 billion dollars in new spending. Of that, $110 billion will go toward roads and bridges.
Biden was already scheduled to visit Pittsburgh Friday to speak at Carnegie Mellon’s Mill 19. Biden told the crowd there the bridge collapse shows why infrastructure should be a priority.
“We don’t need headlines saying that someone was killed when the next bridge collapses,” Biden said. “We saw today, when a bridge is in disrepair, it literally can threaten lives”
Biden was joined at the Mill 19 event by several state and local officials including Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D).
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