With Partial Closures and Load-Limits at the Memorial Bridge Monday, Norton Says Congress Must Take Up Her Bill to Rebuild the Nation’s Federal Roads, Bridges and Transit

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), ranking member of the Highways and Transit subcommittee, today warned District of Columbia and regional residents that the National Park Service (NPS) will begin enforcing a 10-ton load limit on Arlington Memorial Bridge on Monday, June 22. Earlier this month, NPS alerted residents about the 10-ton load-limit, along with closures of the bridge's two outside lanes and four feet of sidewalk. Norton said the load limits to extend the life of the bridge deck for passenger vehicles will have profound effects not only on residents, but on Metro and tour buses, worsening already clogged roadways to and from the nation's capital. She said that the partial closure will be particularly difficult for people going to Arlington National Cemetery and for D.C.'s tourist-based economy. Norton, who holds Congress entirely responsible because of its failure to pass a surface transportation reauthorization bill, said that the Arlington Memorial Bridge, like thousands of others in the U.S., is well past the end of its life span and has become a symbol of the nation's transportation infrastructure crisis. Norton has been pressing for a long-term, six-year surface transportation bill and introduced the administration's six-year GROW AMERICA Act with Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Ranking Member Peter DeFazio (D-OR) in May. She also has introduced a bill authorizing $460 million annually for the NPS's federal lands transportation program to rebuild federal roads and bridges like Arlington Memorial Bridge, which are federal assets and must be fully funded by the federal government.

"Arlington Memorial Bridge has been crumbling in plain sight of the Congress for years," Norton said. "Yet, Members continue to pass the buck and ignore the nation's infrastructure crisis rather than fund even the iconic Memorial Bridge. Even the partial closure of the Memorial Bridge may not be enough to move Congress from its reluctance to spend money on virtually any national necessity. It is going to take public outrage, perhaps like what is expected from the domino effect of a partial shutdown of a major gateway bridge, which is also a major part of the interstate highway system."