Missouri Agency Says Number of “Critical Condition” Bridges Increasing

AASHTO Journal, 4 September 2015

The Missouri Department of Transportation said the number of bridges on state roads that it lists as “in critical need of attention has risen to 641 this summer from 591 a year ago.

While those are still safe to drive over, MoDOT said such “critical condition bridges are the state’s worst, and with continued deterioration are just one or two steps from being closed.”

State Bridge Engineer Dennis Heckman says that trend is likely to continue, since 50 to 100 more fall into that category every year.

The report comes two-and-a-half years after Missouri completed a targeted bridge upgrade program that repaired or replaced more than 800 structures in four years, which MoDOT describes as “the most intense bridge program in the state’s history.”

By comparison, the agency has long been warning that state transportation revenues are not enough for MoDOT to keep existing infrastructure in current condition and that it will soon have to cut back to target its resources on the most heavily traveled road miles while lesser-priority infrastructure continues to deteriorate.

“When we completed the Safe & Sound Bridge Improvement Program in 2012, we stemmed the tide for a while,” Heckman said in a news release. “But we knew that the curve would start going up again. Safe & Sound made a dent; however, it did not repair or replace all of the state’s bad bridges. Now with a shrinking construction budget, the number of bad bridges is on the rise again.”

Missouri has 10,376 bridges on state highways, including 209 that are more than 1,000 feet long. MoDOT also has about 1,400 bridges that have posted weight limits. Many of those are already on the list of critical condition bridges and many others are on the path to being added to the list.

“To get ahead of the game, we should be replacing more than 100 bridges per year,” Heckman said. “Instead, our funding levels are only allowing us to replace about 30. In 10 years, we’ll have about 1,500 bridges on the critical condition list.”

Heckman said MoDOT engineers “aggressively inspect our bridges,” to make sure they are safe for motorists, and “when we discover a problem that is a safety issue we close the bridge.”

MoDOT currently has four bridges that were unexpectedly closed due to problems found, and lists them on a website that includes photos of their condition.

It also says that to replace all of the critical condition bridges “would cost in excess of $820 million, and that is simply not possible with current transportation funding.”

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