bridge

Guangqing Chi, Penn State; Davin Holen, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Heather Randell, Penn State; Megan Mucioki, Penn State, and Rebecca Napolitano, Penn State America’s bridges are in rough shape. Of the nearly 620,000 bridges over roads, rivers and other waterways across the U.S., more than 43,500 of them, about 7%, are considered “structurally deficient.” In Alaska, bridges face a unique and growing set of problems as the planet warms. Permafrost, the frozen ground beneath large parts of the state, is thawing with the changing climate, and that’s shifting the soil and everything on it. Bridges are also increasingly crucial for rural residents who can no longer trust the stability of the rivers’ ice in spring and fall. The infrastructure bill passed by Congress on Nov. 5 and heade...

The Runway Project is making entrepreneurship more accessible to Black communities. Richmond, California, native April Fenall didn’t grow up with aspirations of becoming an entrepreneur. But upon moving from Sacramento back to the Bay Area in 2015, she couldn’t find work. A past conviction—even though it had been expunged from her record—and severe scoliosis made it difficult to find gainful employment. So she became an entrepreneur out of necessity. “I wasn’t able to show up as my complete self,” Fenall said, referring to her struggle to integrate into the workforce. “And I made an assumption that other people were probably encountering the same thing, of having all of these different identities that make up a whole person but not being able to show up as that whole p...

Tag: bridge

Congress Infrastructure Bill Promises Billions For Bridge Repair

How Funding Black Businesses Can Help Bridge the Racial Wealth Gap