19 structurally deficient bridges that Americans drive over every day

July 31, 2016

By Katherine CavanaughMax Nisen, Business Insider

Some of America’s bridges need a little love. Structural deficiency can lead to disaster.
Joshua Adam Nuzzo

Henry Blodget recently wrote on the need for infrastructure spending in the United States.

Something that drives that point home is how badly some of our essential infrastructure has decayed. As of last year, 11.5 percent of US bridges, crossed by an average of 282,672,680 vehicles daily, were graded as "structurally deficient" by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

The National Bridge Inventory is used by the FHWA to create a list of eligible projects for the federal Highway Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Program. According to the FHWA, "HBRRP funds can only be used to replace or to rehabilitate bridges which are significantly important and are unsafe."

Bridges with a sufficiency rating of 80 percent or less that have not been built or significantly repaired within the last 10 years are considered "structurally deficient" and appear on the list.

From the FHWA's guidance on the program: "Those bridges appearing on the list with a sufficiency rating of less than 50.0 will be eligible for replacement or rehabilitation while those with a sufficiency rating of 80.0 or less will be eligible for rehabilitation."

Private construction is way up, but reduced public spending is a drag on the economy.

When we have 8.2 percent unemployment, historically low borrowing rates, and a stagnant recovery, we need to be fixing this and building better infrastructure for the future. Here's somewhere we can start.

Note on terminology: A sufficiency rating is a measure of a bridge's ability to stay in service based on four separate factors. A deck is the bridge's supporting surface, the superstructure supports the deck, and the substructure is the bridge's foundation. Each of the following bridges is on the FHWA's list, and has a sufficiency rating below 80, which is the threshold below which a bridge is considered deficient.

I-10 at I-110 Avenue (Los Angeles, California)

I-25 over the South Platte River (Denver, CO)

I-76 over Klemm Avenue (Camden, NJ)

IS-695 over Milford Mill Rd. (Baltimore County, MD)

Halona Street over Kapalama Canal (Honolulu, HI)

I-95 over Hendricks Ave. (Jacksonville, FL)

I-278, an approach to the Verazano Bridge (Staten Island, NY)

I-93 over Riverside Ave. (Medford, MA)

I-290 over Salt Creek (Addison, IL)

I-95 over Jefferson Blvd. (Warwick, RI)

I-35E over Pennsylvania Ave. (St. Paul, MN)

I-15 over US 95 (Las Vegas, NV)

I-70 over Fisher Road (Columbus, OH)

Second Blvd. over I-94 (Wayne, MI)

I-64 ramp at River Rd. (Louisville, KY)

I-65 over City Street (Birmingham, AL)

I-95 over SR 745 (New Haven, CT)

Route 395 over the George Washington Memorial Parkway (Arlington, VA)

PA Turnpike at S. York Rd. (Hatboro, PA)