President Biden on Thursday made a trip to Pittsburgh to visit the Fern Hollow Bridge, which collapsed earlier this year as officials work to reopen the crossing before the end of the year.

It caps off a bevy of presidential bridge visits over the last year. It was Biden's second stop at this particular span. His first visit came shortly after the bridge collapsed in January, when he was scheduled to make a speech elsewhere in the city. Just a few months prior, Biden visited another dilapidated bridge, this one in New Hampshire, one day after he signed his bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on Nov. 15.

Biden's staff, most notably Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, have also been visiting bridges around the country in recent months in an effort to put bridge repair front and center to tout how the infrastructure law's funds are being spent.

The visits also come as experts continue to raise alarm bells about America’s bridge problem. A 2021 report found that there are more than 46,000 “structurally deficient” bridges around the country that, nevertheless, are crossed 178 million times every day.

"It never should have come to this" Biden said Thursday from the Fern Hollow Bridge construction site about that state of the nation's infrastructure, adding that the new law means "we are finally getting to it."

$40 billion for bridges

Biden aides point out that fixing bridges not only impacts the lives and safety of everyday drivers but will also help improve crimps in the hobbled supply chain. Roadway funding for the coming year includes another big slice set aside for bridges, with $5.5 billion going into the Department of Transportation’s Bridge Formula Program for fiscal year 2023 (which begins in November). The money matches 2022 funding levels, but represents a 391% jump compared to 2021 — before the law went into effect.

A 2021 infrastructure report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers put a spotlight on the dire problem: Of the more than 617,000 bridges in the U.S., 46,154 of them — or 7.5% — are classified as structurally deficient. Civil engineers also estimate that $125 billion needed to repair America's bridge repair backlog, underlining how much additional investment is likely going to be needed beyond the infrastructure law in the years ahead.