So… ever wonder which Oregon bridges are most likely to collapse, killing us all?
Transportation advocacy group Transportation for America released a report yesterday on the state of the nation’s bridges, including a run down of Oregon’s crossings in most need of repair.
The good news? According to the report, Oregon is making smarter choices and has safer bridges than most of the country. Although 456 of the state’s 7,259 bridges are “structurally deficient”, that’s actually better than 42 other states. Which is, um, scary.
The big reason we’re better off than most of the country: Oregon spends more money to repair its bridges than the average state, and less money building new ones we don’t have the budget to maintain. In 2008, spent $334 million in federal funds to repair bridges, about 41 percent of the money possible available. The average state spent only 13 percent of available funds. And while other states spent an average of 30 percent of their federal dollars to expand capacity (build more roads), Oregon spend less—24.3 percent.
The report specifically calls out the Sellwood Bridge as a giant danger sign—on a scale of 1-100, with 100 being structurally sound, the Sellwood receives a two.
But there are actually higher-traffic bridges in Oregon that are also falling apart. Here’s the list of the highest-traffic, most-deficient bridges:
Transportation for America also put together this cool interactive map where you can look at the safety of any bridge in Oregon.
Whoa… Oregon has 7.2K bridges? Wow. That’s a lot more than I have have ever guessed. I wonder what is the average # of bridges per state…
Shouldn’t we be fixing these bridges before sinking $3-10bn into the CRC?
Oh wow, a lot of those smaller middle states like Kansas have around 25K… we’re actually on the lower end for number of bridges. @me, Baffled!
It’s a good thing no one travels on that “I-5” road.
I find this post, and this study, to be unnecessarily negative. Where’s the “what r the best bridges (2 have a dance party on)?” study?
Prince already posted the results of that study and, surprise, they’re all in Minneapolis.
I found the Bridge of the Gods a bit terrifying the first time I drove over it. That was in the early 90’s though.
For the sake of the children and traffic calming let’s just tear them all down.