Almost a third of the nation's bridges are dilapidated or too narrow or too weak to carry the traffic crossing them, federal records show. In many state capitals, as in Washington, officials say the money's just not there to fix them.
In Vermont, a trade group worries about the safety of a bridge frequently used by state lawmakers to reach Montpelier. "If they could see that bridge from underneath, they'd take another route to the capital," said Thom Serrani, executive director of the Associated General Contractors of Vermont.In Jacksonville, Fla., heavy trucks and buses are being detoured around the Fuller Warren Bridge on Interstate 95, the East Coast's major north-south artery. State engineers said the larger vehicles were literally shaking the bridge to pieces.
And in the nation's capital, where lawmakers are debating how to spend federal gasoline tax revenues for the next six years, the Potomac River's busiest span is a symbol of bridge decay.
Construction crews can frequently be seen replacing asphalt along the Woodrow Wilson drawbridge, which carries traffic of I-95 and I-495 - the famed Capitol Beltway - around Washington. Engineers warn the structure has only seven years before heavy trucks must be banned. Local leaders are trying to persuade Congress to pick up most of $1.6 billion price tag to replace it.
An Associated Press computer analysis of Federal Highway Administration data found 182,730 of the nation's 581,942 bridges - 31.4 percent - were rated deficient as of June 30, 1996.
One of every four bridges on the National Highway System, the backbone of America's road network, is obsolete or has structural problems, according to the highway administration's 1997 report to Congress.
Most deficient bridges are not in danger of collapse. Some simply are too narrow to handle current traffic loads. But others need major repairs, soon.
"Traveling through virtually any city, you see the bridges crumbling over your head," said Bill Jackman, a spokesman for the AAA motor club, which has warned that too little is being spent to maintain bridges.
A decade after 10 people died when a New York State Thruway bridge plunged into a rain-swollen creek in one of the nation's worst bridge disasters, that state has the highest percentage of deficient bridges: 60.5 percent. Hawaii and Massachusetts reported more than half their bridges deficient.
In West Virginia, where 45.4 percent of the bridges are substandard, officials are keeping a wary eye on the creaky 66-year-old Shadle Bridge near the Ohio border.
Inspectors say it is still safe, but local residents fear a repeat of the nearby Silver Bridge collapse in 1967 that claimed 46 lives, the nation's worst bridge disaster.
That accident spurred a nationwide review of bridges and led to the federal requirement that bridges be inspected regularly.
There have been more recent wake-up calls as well.
Two years ago, five people died when an I-5 bridge near Coalinga, Calif., gave way to raging waters. For at least five years before that accident, engineers had been developing flood-control plans that might have prevented the collapse.
An expansion joint on a Connecticut Turnpike bridge over the Quinnipiac River near New Haven popped out twice last April, snarling traffic along I-95.