We love bridges at NESN Fuel, especially ones that are safe. But apparently there’s a bunch of bridges in the United States that will have us searching for alternative routes.
The American Road and Transportation Builders Association announced on its website Wednesday that 55,710 bridges in the U.S. are “structurally deficient.” The list, which is broken down by state, was compiled using data provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which scores bridges on a nine-point scale.
Notable bridges on the list include the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, Yankee Doodle in Connecticut and Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C.
“America’s highway network is woefully underperforming,” Alison Premo Black, ARTBA’s chief economist who conducted the analysis, said via USA TODAY. “It is outdated, overused, underfunded and in desperate need of modernization.”
The nearly 60,000 bridges listed are crossed by vehicles approximately 185 million times a day, according to ARTBA’s analysis. Some bridges not on the list could use some work too, as the group claims 173,919 — or one in four — U.S. bridges are 50 years old and are yet to have undergone major reconstruction. Moreover, 13,000 bridges along interstates need replacement, widening or major reconstruction.
Per usual, money appears to be an obstacle.
“State and local transportation departments haven’t been provided the resources to keep pace with the nation’s bridge needs,” Black said, via USA TODAY.
Not many states came out of the study feeling good about themselves, but some definitely have more work to do than others. The five states with the most deficient bridges were Iowa with 4,968; Pennsylvania with 4,506; Oklahoma with 3,460; Missouri with 3,195; and Nebraska with 2,361.
The state with the highest percentage of bridges deemed deficient? That would be Rhode Island, at 25 percent.
Thumbnail photo via Pexels
