By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - More than a quarter of the nation's bridges are too weak, dilapidated or overburdened for their current traffic, according to federal records that detail an American road system that hasn't kept pace with a booming economy.
Dramatic stories of spans with falling concrete or weak supports abound across the country, even though the government has spent billions on repairs over the last few years, an Associated Press computer analysis of the records found.
School buses in Washington County in southwestern Alabama seeking to lower their weight used to have to stop at one end of a decaying bridge, let children off to walk across the span, and pick them up on the other side. Now, the buses drive 15 extra miles a day to avoid the bridge altogether.
"We said many times we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for letting that happen," said Sonny Brasfield, assistant executive director of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama.
In Louisiana, a bridge over Thompsons Creek was hastily put back in place, not rebuilt, after floodwaters washed it away. To compensate, officials put new limits on the weight of trucks crossing the span.
"It would not make any structural engineer comfortable to look at the thing," state engineer Gill Gautreau said.
And in Denver, softball-sized chunks of concrete routinely break off the Interstate 70 viaduct near the city's coliseum. "It's just falling apart," firefighter John Afshar said. "They clean up the mess pretty quickly."
The AP computer analysis of Federal Highway Administration records found 167,993 of 587,755 bridges - or 29 percent - were rated by the government as "deficient" as of Aug. 31, 2000.
That's a slight improvement from four years earlier when 31 percent of bridges were deemed deficient, defined as structures that either require repairs or are too narrow or weak to handle the traffic that must use the bridges to get from place to place.
"There has been some improvement, but the numbers are quite high. There's certainly a long way to go," said Frank Moretti, research director for The Road Information Program, a transportation group funded by construction and manufacturing companies.
Three states - Hawaii, Rhode Island and Massachusetts - report more than half of their bridges are rated as deficient.
Few deficient bridges are in danger of collapsing, though there have been a few recent incidents.
In October 1999, a section of pavement on Lee's Bridge across the Sudbury River in Massachusetts collapsed without warning. No one was injured, but the bridge was closed for repairs. Even before the collapse, heavy trucks were banned from the well-traveled structure.
In Wisconsin, ceremonies Saturday marked the reopening of the southbound lanes of the Hoan Bridge over Milwaukee's Lake Michigan harbor. The bridge had been closed since December after cracks were found in two of the three girders supporting a section of the northbound lanes. The southbound lanes, which have been reinforced, now carry two-way traffic.
Many bridges deemed deficient simply fail to meet current safety standards, such as the width of lanes. Such narrow bridges further clog already crowded roadways.
"Any time you have a rutted or inadequately maintained bridge, it can slow down traffic, it can present a safety hazard, and if you let it go too long, you have to undergo major maintenance," American Automobile Association spokesman Stephen Hayes said. "The maintenance activity then will slow down traffic even further."
Recognizing the problem, Congress set aside billions of dollars for bridge repairs.
The 1991 surface transportation bill allocated $16.1 billion over seven years - the current bill sets aside $20.4 billion over six years.
"You don't fix a bridge with good intentions - it takes cold, hard cash to pay for the rehabilitation or replacement," said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Still, there's not enough money to go around.
"With limited resources, you do the immediate cost-effective repairs," Moretti said. "What tends to lag behind are the older bridges and the larger bridges where it would take significant investment to either replace or reconstruct them."
North Carolina transportation officials say they need $65 million to clear a backlog of bad bridges. The state spends $45 million a year on regular bridge repairs. Almost one-third of North Carolina's bridges are deemed deficient, the AP review found.
"We have too ... many substandard bridges in a state that brags about being the 'Good Roads State,'" said Tom Crosby, a spokesman for AAA Carolinas Motor Club in Charlotte, N.C.
Other states are boosting spending. In Kansas, where one-quarter of the bridges are deficient, the legislature passed a 10-year, $13 billion transportation program in 1999.
"They have been giving us the money so we can make the improvements," said Kansas Department of Transportation spokesman Marty Matthews.
Utah has spent millions since 1996 to repair or replace bridges to prepare for the 2002 Olympics. The state created the Centennial Highway Fund, using money from a 1997 gas tax increase as well as the state's general fund.
Alabamans voted to borrow $50 million last fall to fix bridges after hearing that 1,900 structures were closed to school buses because they couldn't handle the weight. The bridge where school children had to walk across is "the first bridge we're going to fix," assistant Washington County engineer John Studstill said.
