According to Lauren Townsend, New Jersey's bridge infrastructure is crumbling and some of these bridges are in Springfield.

"Springfield has at least three bridges that have been deemed "structurally deficient," said Townsend, who is the Organizing and Advocacy Director of the New Jersey Citizen Action (NJCA). Structurally deficient means the bridges are no longer able to support the load that is currently being placed on them.

To illustrate her point, Townsend, members of SEIU New Jersey, and the New Jersey Working Families Alliance gathered Wednesday morning at a bridge located in Springfield that spans the Rahway River on Morris Avenue to highlight the need for investment in New Jersey’s infrastructure.

“America’s infrastructure is crumbling," Townsend said. "The Morris Ave (Route 82) bridge over the Rahway River is one of thousands of bridges throughout New Jersey and our nation that is in ill repair.  Every day 28,471 cars travel over this bridge, yet it has structural problems and has not been inspected since July 2009.  For public safety and for our economy, we should put people to work fixing our crumbling infrastructure.”

Kevin Brown, the New Jersey Area Leader of SEIU 32BJ said “It is essential that we invest in our infrastructure – including roads and bridges –right now.  In order for this country to function and lead in the 21^st Century we need to update our crumbling and outdated infrastructure in addition to building the infrastructure of the future.”

All three groups support the Obama Administration’s American Jobs Act, which would pump 1.3 billion dollars of funding for NJ’s infrastructure repairs and create more than 17,000 jobs.

Bill Holland, Executive Director of the NJ Working Families Alliance, said “we can afford to create good jobs for everyone in America by ending tax giveaways to big corporations, taxing Wall Street speculation to pay for Main Street job creation, raising taxes on millionaires and cutting wasteful Pentagon spending. And by remembering that the best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work.”

An interactive map outlining crumbling bridges in New Jersey and throughout the United States is available online at www.t4America.org

U.S. states, ranked by percentage of deficient bridges