President Biden will do aerial tour of I-95 collapse on his visit to Philadelphia Saturday
Biden was already scheduled to be in Philadelphia on Saturday for a reelection rally with union workers.
![President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign rally for Pennsylvania's Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro and Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman in November 2022.](https://www.inquirer.com/resizer/oOgTOkYUSj3QC0dlN7aLORns_fM=/760x507/smart/filters:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/VRSERQ76MZGXPC4G6KU5YR7574.jpg)
President Joe Biden will visit the site of the I-95 bridge collapse on Saturday and receive a briefing on reconstruction efforts.
Biden, who was already scheduled to be in Philadelphia for a reelection rally with union workers, will go on an aerial tour of the site, according to the White House, and then meet with officials to learn about repair efforts. Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Bob Casey, U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, and Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney will join the president on the aerial tour.
“President Biden has instructed his team to move heaven and earth and work around the clock to ensure the fastest possible reconstruction of the highway,” deputy White House press secretary Olivia Dalton told reporters in a briefing Friday. She said that the tour “would not interfere with traffic around the highway, detour routes, or the reconstruction efforts.”
The section of I-95, which collapsed after a truck carrying gasoline overturned and caught fire beneath a highway overpass, killing the driver, carried an average of 160,000 vehicles daily.
Shapiro has vowed a speedy fix to the roadway without giving a specific timeline for completion. Shapiro said this week that he’d freed up $7 million in state funds and the federal government had allocated $3 million so far to the project.
Later in the afternoon, Biden and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to appear at the Convention Center with members of the AFL-CIO and other unions for a reelection rally from noon to 3 p.m. Then they’ll return to Rehoboth Beach, where they’ll stay for the weekend, according to White House reports.
Biden has made supporting labor a focus of his presidency, and unions played a big role in his 2020 presidential campaign.