With bratwurst simmering in beer and onions and German potato salad cooling in the refrigerator, ready for my daughter-in-law Nancy’s arrival at our northern Wisconsin cottage later that night, I nonchalantly flipped on the TV to catch the evening news. As I pulled spices from the hickory cabinets and mashed avocados for guacamole, I was horrified to watch clips of the I-35 Mississippi River Bridge collapsing, immediately realizing that Nancy would not arrive as planned. She’d been summoned to return to the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis to nurse the victims hauled to the emergency room from the depths of the river. Thirteen people were killed and 35 injured during rush hour that August evening in 2007. The Mississippi River Bridge carried 140,000 vehicles every day. It took over a year to replace it.

In May 2013, the I-5 Skagit River Bridge carrying 71,000 vehicles a day collapsed in the state of Washington, severing a vital transportation corridor between Oregon and Canada that linked the cities of Vancouver, British Columbia and Seattle. A truck with an oversize load struck several overhead support beams on the bridge, leading to an immediate collapse of the northernmost span. Built in 1955, the through-truss bridge was functionally obsolete. Its design, rated “fracture critical,” did not have the redundancy to protect its structural integrity if one of the support elements failed. It took fourteen months until the permanent bridge was operationally complete.

When I moved to the tri-state area (NY-NJ-CT) in 1985, I was unaware of the collapse two years earlier of the bridge deck spanning I-95 over the Mianus River in Greenwich. Three people were killed and three injured as the deck plunged 70 feet into the river. That section of the I-95 corridor carries 130,000 to 200,000 vehicles a day. Rusting pin bearings, corroded from inadequate rainwater drainage during road repairs ten years earlier when a crew failed to unblock highway drains, caused the collapse. The difficult to inspect outer bearings were “fracture critical” and non-redundant. The replacement span was not completed until 1992. How many engineers working in pairs would it have taken back then to inspect Connecticut’s 3,425 bridges? Would you believe only 12?

On a frosty night in 2013, as my New Haven bound train arrived at Stamford, Connecticut, the crew informed us that there was no train service beyond that point. With no way to get home, I roused my son-in-law from bed to come to my rescue, my fingers turning numb as I waited for his car to reach the station. The Railroad Swing Bridge over the Norwalk River had been stuck in the open position, perpendicular to the tracks. Built in 1896, that bridge malfunctioned 16 times out of 271 openings last year. Twice in a span of two weeks just this summer, the railroad swing bridge failed to close, causing major Metro-North and Amtrak delays, congestion on Connecticut highways, and restricted marine traffic. The Norwalk bridge is only one of four movable bridges on the New Haven line all more than 109 years old and in need of major repair or replacement. I now check my Metro-North train service alerts as regularly as the weather whenever I’m scheduled to go into New York City.

“The probability of the bridge failing to close is so high — and the consequences so enormous and unacceptable — that urgent action is unavoidably essential,” wrote US Senator Richard Blumenthal in a recent letter to the Coast Guard.

In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued its latest report card on American’s infrastructure. www.infrastructurereportcard.org We got a D+. Here’s what ASCE had to say about bridges, roads, rails and transit:

Bridges: C+

Over two hundred million trips are taken daily across deficient bridges in the nation’s 102 largest metropolitan regions. In total, one in nine of the nation’s bridges are rated as structurally deficient, while the average age of the nation’s 607,380 bridges is currently 42 years.

Rail: C+

Railroads are experiencing a competitive resurgence as both an energy-efficient freight transportation option and a viable city-to-city passenger service. In 2012, Amtrak recorded its highest year of ridership with 31.2 million passengers, almost doubling ridership since 2000, with growth anticipated to continue.

Roads: D

Forty-two percent of America’s major urban highways remain congested, costing the economy an estimated $101 billion in wasted time and fuel annually. Currently, the Federal Highway Administration estimates that $170 billion in capital investment would be needed on an annual basis to significantly improve conditions and prevent decline in the long term.

Transit: D

Transit agencies struggle to balance increasing ridership (up 9.1% in the past decade) with declining funding. America’s public transit connects millions of people with jobs, medical facilities, schools, shopping, and recreation, and is critical to the one-third of Americans who do not drive cars. Forty-five percent of American households lack any access to transit, and millions more have inadequate service levels. Deficient and deteriorating transit systems cost the U.S. economy $90 billion in 2010.

Rivers fascinate me, but I don’t want to plunge into one via car or train. There are lots of rivers on the way to D.C., home to the highest rate of deficient bridges (77%), topping the percentage for any state in the country. Do members of congress feel confident crossing these bridges, or are they intent on building bridges to nowhere?

There are some bridges that congress needs to cross right now:

• Index the federal gasoline tax to the rate of inflation. The last increase was in 1993.
• Beef up federal toll programs.
• Ensure the long-term continuation of the Highway Trust Fund. fixthetrustfund.org
• Earmark revenue from the federal gasoline tax for its intended use with no diversions. As my grandchildren would say, “Swiper, no Swiping!”

And then, there are the 100 deficient bridges closer to home in Fairfield County. Care to cross?

Gina Ryan is the former executive director and CEO of the Society of Women Engineers and also chaired the Traffic Commission of the City of Tustin, California