One Year Later: Are Bridges Any Safer?
Inspectors still rely on old methods such as visual check-ups, experts say.
Aug. 1, 2008— -- One year after a bridge collapse in Minneapolis killed 13 people, bridge inspections across the country are still fundamentally flawed and inundated with error, according to industry experts and recent studies.
Most bridge check-ups are still done visually, which means the risk of error tends to be frequent, according to safety experts. The government has issued no standard for new, updated maintenance equipment since last year's collapse, which came a full six years after a government study showed bridge inspectors had a poor rate of assessing damage.
Back in 2001 the Federal Highway Administration tested 49 bridge inspectors in 49 states by accompanying them on tests to bridges FHWA officials knew had flaws.
"Over 50% of the time visual inspections were found to be incorrect," according to Marybeth Miceli of safety technology firm Material Technologies. FHWA officials also found that inspectors missed locating fatigue cracks in bridges over 90% of the time.
Samuel Schwartz, formerly the chief engineer of bridge safety for the New York City Department of Transportation, said bridge inspection is essentially in the eye of the beholder.
"One bridge may be a red flag for one inspector and look perfectly safe to another", Schwartz said.
Yet visual inspections continue to be the first line of defense for inspectors across the country. Each state has its own bridge inspection manual but typically those manuals don't involve how to take important measurements. Instead they suggests ways of seeing corrosion, tapping concrete and noticing distortion.
The Transportation Construction Coalition says there is a pending $14 billion dollar cut in funding for federal highway investment in the coming years. That cut would affect bridge inspection and maintenance meaning a major safety threat and unidentified dangers, experts say.
Even before this proposed cut, one bridge fails each week in the U.S. either by closure or collapse. Roughly 1,500 collapses occurred in the last year, according to a study by the Federal Highway Administration. Experts say as many as a quarter of the nation's bridges are in need of repair.
"Many bridges today are structurally too weak or cannot accommodate the increase in traffic or loads," according to Greg Cohen, president of the American Highway Users Alliance, "preventative action can be taken to fix this problem."
Another new report released by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) outlines the critical updates needed to improve our nation's bridges. The cost is estimated at $140 billion to modernize and repair these structures immediately. And with construction costs rising by at least 50 percent, maintenance and repair work looks like it's much farther down the road.
While there is new technology to help identify problem areas in bridge structures, many bridge builders are not implementing it into their designs. Bridges constructed post World War II were built for efficiency and had an estimated life of 30 years. Now, very few resources are available, including money, to successfully maintain the heavily traveled structures. Weight limits and traffic restrictions have to be enforced on some of the nation's vital roadway networks.
"We don't have a dedicated funding source that's going to be adequate for the future," said Schwartz, "we still haven't gotten the message across to our politicians that we either pay now or pay way more later."
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has been waging a national campaign to address the conditions of the bridges and why modernization is a necessity.
"Our ongoing campaign on behalf of realistic transportation investment is all about ensuring public safety and rebuilding our economy," said Gov. Rendell. "We simply can't wait. We need solutions, not rhetoric."
Gov. Rendell addressed the need for an investment in these important structures with an assembly of transportation leaders. The House of Representatives voted 387 to 37 to transfer $8.017 billion to the Highway Trust Fund and offset a projected shortfall in Fiscal Year 2009, according to a press release.
Inspection technologies are available, just not required. While there has been a push for more reliable inspections, many bridge owners fear what new technology could reveal.