Inauguration highlights Trump's infrastructure opportunities

WASHINGTON -- As a candidate, Donald Trump said he wanted to make America's infrastructure great again.

As president, he'll have plenty of ways to get started in his new hometown.

The Arlington Memorial Bridge, Washington's most recognizable span over the Potomac River, is in such bad shape, it will be closed to vehicle traffic during Friday's inauguration.

Hundreds of thousands will rely on the Metro subway to reach the Capitol and the National Mall, and they'll get a firsthand look at a system that's deteriorated significantly during the last eight years and has repair needs measured in the billions.

Even the Washington Monument is shut down because of a broken elevator.

Visitors won't be able to ride to the top again until at least 2019.

Political leaders in the region, mostly Democrats, say the city's infrastructure mess presents an opportunity to Trump and Republicans in Congress to show they can govern and deliver on one of the new president's touted campaign promises.

But as Trump gets ready to take office, they're not optimistic he's ready to follow through.

"It'll be in his face. He'll see the worn-out infrastructure right here where he lives," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who's the District of Columbia's delegate in Congress. "But we don't yet have, especially for the first 100 days, any indication that he wants to start off with a plan."

Trump has promised to employ millions of workers to rebuild the nation's highways, bridges, tunnels and airports and make them "second to none" in the process.

It's an unquestioned need.

Nationwide, governments are short $1.4 trillion of the money needed to make necessary repairs to infrastructure -- including drinking, wastewater and mass transit systems -- through 2025, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

That's the problem with the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which connects the Lincoln Memorial with Arlington National Cemetery and is arguably the region's most pressing need.

One of the five spans that bring vehicles across the Potomac River into traffic-choked Washington, it will be forced to close by 2021 without a reconstruction, expected to cost at least $250 million.

The National Park Service won a $90 million federal grant last year to begin the project but is still looking for a way to come up the rest of the money.

"It's the absolute poster child for our crumbling infrastructure nationally," said Rep. Don Beyer, a Democrat who represents the Virginia side of the bridge. "We're allowing our national capital to crumble before our eyes and the eyes of the whole world. It's pretty embarrassing."

During the campaign, Trump positioned himself as capable of addressing the public-works problem because of his business background.

But his plans have been open-ended and short on specifics, and many Republicans in Congress are not eager to approve large-scale infrastructure spending.