CHARLESTON — A fatal bridge collapse in Minneapolis renewed calls Thursday for thorough bridge inspections nationwide, with some estimating the cost of bringing all bridges to today’s safety standards could easily surpass $100 billion.
Federal Highway Administration figures show 26 percent of the nation’s 596,842 bridges were structurally deficient or functionally obsolete in 2006, including 37 percent of West Virginia’s 6,956 bridges.
“That should not be confused with any kind of catastrophic failure taking place,” said Hota GangaRao, a civil engineering professor at West Virginia University. “However, one needs to be careful about evaluating these bridges on a continuous basis.”
GangaRao said at least $100 billion would be required to bring all the nation’s bridges up to current safety standards.
“Obviously we don’t have that kind of money,” he said. “We need to focus a bit more on effective rehabilitation techniques, and even to understand where and how one can do the rehab. First, one has to inspect (bridges) with modern techniques that’s nondestruction, noninvasive.”
Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., vice chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said the Minnesota collapse “was a clear call for a serious reassessment of our transportation infrastructure.”
“By investing in the transportation needs of our country, we can work to make sure tragedies like this never happen again, and get back to rebuilding America,” Rahall said.
West Virginia highway engineers were trying to determine Thursday how many steel-truss bridges were similar in design to the one that collapsed in Minnesota, said John Walker, a deputy state highway engineer.
The eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge that buckled during evening rush hour Wednesday was built in 1967, the same year the Silver Bridge spanning the Ohio River between Kanauga, Ohio, and Point Pleasant collapsed, killing 46.
After years of corrosion and neglect, a crucial joint in the 39-year-old Silver Bridge’s suspension system snapped and the normal vibrations of heavy rush-hour traffic on U.S. 35 shook it apart. Dozens of cars and trucks followed the structure into the river.
States are now required to inspect bridges every two years, but the quality of inspections varies, GangaRao said.
“It not only varies from state to state but it could vary from the inspection crew to another inspection crew. There’s a degree of subjectivity to this,” he said.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, there are 55,613 bridges nationwide at least 75 years old, including 9,918 past the century mark. West Virginia has 85 bridges built before 1905, ranking 17th among the states.
The state Division of Highways considers 1,000 bridges, or about 14 percent of the state’s total, to be structurally deficient, meaning some element of concern was identified in inspections among the deck, steel, concrete or piers, Walker said.
“A pothole wouldn’t do it,” he said.
Many of the bridges deemed structurally deficient are single-lane or small spans over creeks that have weight limits and signs posted nearby. Bridges that are considered in poor shape are replaced, and none of West Virginia’s major bridges are in that category, Walker said.
“We feel like West Virginia does as good a job as anybody out there,” he said.