There's a relatively famous story of a former West Virginia mining town that had the only access bridge collapse, isolating the town via any route except privat

There's a relatively famous story of a former West Virginia mining town that had the only access bridge collapse, isolating the town via any route except private roads owned by the original mining company (that, due to bad blood via the way the mining town turned from a company town to a public municipality, the mining company refused to let the townsfolk use). Because the bridge crossed the river separating West Virginia and Kentucky, each state (two of the poorest states in the Union) pointed at the other as being responsible for reinstituting the bridge. Neither did so, and the Federal government refrained from intervening. Desparate to see something happen, the de facto mayor (he didn't want the job, but people tend to look for leadership in a crisis) hit upon a stroke of genius. You see, this was all happening... In 1977. The town's mayor wrote a letter for international aid to solve a humanitarian crisis... To the USSR. It took West Virginia like a week to announce their plans to build a new bridge. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/print/Article/2433 https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/print/Article/2433 All this to say: bridges tend to connect two different municipalities because water tends to be a natural administrative and territorial divide, so it is not as surprising as one might think that they can stay down far longer than is efficient. Putting them back up requires two municipalities to agree on the cost structure... Municipalities that, worse than having differing goals, have all the long-memory animosities that build up from being forced-geographic neighbors, so they come to the table with a bag of opposing goals.