Crash puts focus on aging US bridges

Many are substandard as funding goes unspent

Bridge experts and U.S. presidents have decried the nation’s aging bridges and lack of maintenance for decades. Calls for sorely needed fixes resurfaced Tuesday after a cargo ship struck Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. The collision caused the bridge to collapse within seconds, sending six bridge construction workers who are now presumed dead into the dark waters of the Patapsco River.

And while the circumstances of Tuesday morning’s disaster – a massive cargo ship charging into a bridge support beam – could not have been predicted, experts still say the nation needs to seriously improve bridge maintenance and repair.

About 1 in 3 U.S. bridges needs repair or replacement, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association’s latest analysis of bridge conditions.

Rick Geddes, director of Cornell University’s infrastructure policy program, said the bridge collapse highlights several crucial issues.

“This disaster reveals how exposed America’s critical infrastructure is to sudden and devastating accidents as well as intentional destruction,” Geddes said. “Improved resilience should be on everyone’s mind as aging infrastructure is rebuilt. Enhanced protection against ship-bridge collisions will certainly become more salient.”

Between 1960 and 2015, there were 35 major bridge collapses worldwide due to ship or barge collisions, killing 342 people, according to a 2018 report from the World Association for Waterborne Transport. Eighteen of the major collapses occurred in the United States.

For decades, America’s leaders and experts alike have debated what to do

about U.S. bridges. For instance, fixing aging bridge infrastructure was one of the few issues that Republicans and Democrats agreed upon as a pressing issue during the 2016 presidential election buildup. Yet eight years later, the problem continues to fester.

“The rate of deterioration is exceeding the rate of repair, rehabilitation, and replacement, all while the number of bridges sliding into the ‘fair’ category is growing.”

American Society of Civil

Engineers report

Bridges old enough to retire

The country’s bridges are old. Many were built during the “peak interstate construction period” from the 1950s to the early 1970s, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

About 42% of the nation’s more than 600,000 highway bridges are over 50 years old – about a 39% increase from 2016, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.

The report card says more than 222,000 bridge spans and 76,000 bridges need some type of repair. Of those hundreds of thousands of bridges, about 12% were 80 years or older.

Notably, the report found that structurally deficient bridges were nearly 69 years old on average.

“Most of the country’s bridges were designed for a service life of approximately 50 years, so as time passes, an ever-increasing number of bridges will need major rehabilitation or replacement,” according to the report.

Furthermore, extreme weather, a rise in vehicle traffic, heavier vehicle loads, delayed maintenance and oversight issues have caused bridges to deteriorate faster than expected.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated that Americans take 178 million trips across these bridges each day.

The American Road and Transportation Builders Association said the federal government classifies a bridge as “structurally deficient” if critical components such as deck, superstructure, substructure and culverts are rated less than or equal to four – designating the bridge in poor or worse condition.

Although structurally deficient bridges are still considered operational, according to the infrastructure rehabilitation company UHPC Solutions, elements of these bridges require significant maintenance or must be monitored closely for defects.

National bridge inspections are mandated by the federal government and occur periodically, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers report. The time between inspections can range from 12 to 48 months.

The report also noted that bridges categorized as “fair” remain a concern, as they can be one inspection away from being downgraded in classification.

“The rate of deterioration is exceeding the rate of repair, rehabilitation, and replacement, all while the number of bridges sliding into the ‘fair’ category is growing,” the report said.

Data shows repairs could take decades. “At the current pace, it would take nearly 75 years to repair them all,” the