On January 27, 2014, TRB’s Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) Committee sent its fourth letter report to Victor Mendez, administrator of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The committee provides advice and assistance on the conduct of the LTBP program, which is designed to collect research-quality data on a large representative sample of in-service U.S. highway bridges and to analyze these data to improve understanding of the mechanisms and timing of bridge deterioration due to the effects of age, materials, traffic, and weather.
The report includes recommendations related to conducting outreach to state highway agencies concerning the plans and progress of the LTBP program and its forthcoming benefits, developing annual funding requests based on a prioritized ranking of the program’s activities and progress as measured against schedules and milestone, transferring the LTBP Bridge Portal to an internal FHWA server as soon as possible, comparing the feasibility of a single all-encompassing bridge performance index with several specific performance indices, and including locally-owned bridges in the sets of bridges studied in the program.
