2019 Bridge Inventory: States struggle to keep up with deteriorating bridges

With few exceptions, states are losing the battle with aging bridges in need of repair or replacement.

Even states with low percentages of bridges rated poor are finding it difficult to keep up with bridge and road systems that in many cases are 50 years old or older.

Utah, which ranks fourth for the lowest percentage of poor bridges, programs a bridge for repair or replacement in the year after it drops to a poor rating, completing the project within four or five years. The Utah Department of Transportation notes, though, that the number of bridges falling from good to fair and from fair to poor ratings continues to increase.

“The greatest challenge is completing enough projects in a given year to replace, rehabilitate and preserve enough bridges to stay ahead of the deterioration trends of an aging inventory,” says the UDOT’s survey for this year’s Equipment World Better Roads Bridge Inventory.

Most of the 41 responding state transportation agencies to the survey indicated that funding was a main challenge in keeping up with bridge repairs, even routine maintenance.

“Many problems could be mitigated or avoided if we had the resources and funding to perform timely maintenance work when issues were first discovered,” says the Louisiana Department of Transportation & Development.

The Washington State Department of Transportation says the average age of its bridge network is 50 years and reducing its bridge rating of 4.45 percent poor will require more money than currently planned.

“We have developed a forecast of bridge preservation needs for the next 10 years,” WSDOT says. “We are only funded at 40 percent of the projected needs.”

Several states have increased gas taxes this year to address their aging roads and bridges.

Nearly every state has raised fuel taxes in the last decade under the premise of fixing the deteriorated infrastructure.

It never gets fixed.

The monies are spent on mass transportation in the urban (Democrat controlled) areas, green projects, etc.

Infrastructure contracts are multiples higher than necessary due to regulatory compliance and graft....plus the protection of union jobs. (Many states mandate private contractors pay union wage rates if they win state contracts).

But even more waste is achieved through “studies”.

How many times have you read about a “study” being conducted of how to repair/replace a piece of infrastructure? The millions spent on something that should take about 5 seconds to decide. Those are the contracts given to political friends/family.

Here in Pennsylvania, we have the second highest fuel taxes, some of the worst infrastructure in the nation and we do decades of “studies” on the same piece of infrastructure only to do nothing about it.

There is a bypass being being in central Pennsylvania that has been in the works for over 40 years. Multiple studies, analysis, etc. As they began work, they discovered it goes across an old deep slag pit where ash was deposited from a power plant....so there is no way to reach bedrock and any road would sink into it. All those studies and they did not know this until after they started the project. Meanwhile, everyone knew this pit was there. The power company that created it is still in business and owns the land. Nobody asked the power company what it was used for.

Will heads roll? Nope. They will spend more on additional “studies” to re-route the bypass, extending the project from a 5 year to 10 year.

OHIO PING!

Please let me know if you want on or off the Ohio Ping list.

Ohio trails only Texas for number of bridges...and only 5% rated as POOR condition and at 60% GOOD condition, Ohio trails only FL, MS, MN, and AZ with %% if GOOD bridges.

2019 Bridge Inventory: States struggle to keep up with deteriorating bridges
Equipment World’s Better Roads ^ | November 11, 2019 | Don McLoud

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