Pete Buttigieg vows to reopen Philadelphia I-95 bridge ‘within weeks’

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reiterated the government’s determination to respond quickly to revive the collapsed Interstate 95 bridge in Philadelphia, saying it was expected to reopen “within weeks.”

“Within weeks they are going to be able to get that done with novel approaches to filling that back in,” Buttigieg said Sunday in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

Buttigieg is in Ise-Shima, Japan, for a meeting with Group of Seven counterparts. He also said in the interview that the U.S. must take steps to cut into China’s advantage in batteries used to power electric vehicles, saying building the refining capacity for key materials is “addressable.”

In Philadelphia, crews have been working around the clock to tear down portions of the highway that remained standing after a tanker-truck flipped and caught fire on June 11. Buttigieg said the rapid reopening was possible with the use of a form of material made out of recycled glass that can be compressed into bricks and paved over.

“So while the permanent work of restoring the bridge takes place they can do that in stages while still having more than half of the original capacity of I-95 running,” he said.

Buttigieg noted that the collapse wasn’t an infrastructure failure, instead resulting from a collision that triggered fire and heat that even modern bridges would be unable to withstand.

“What happened here was an inferno,” he said.

President Joe Biden surveyed the site by helicopter with local and regional leaders on Saturday before speaking at a campaign event.