Nearly a quarter of Oklahoma bridges need overhaul or replacement

Nearly a fourth of the bridges on the Sooner State's highway system are said to need replacing or overhauling, The Associated Press reported Friday.

By JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS
The Associated Press

5/24/2008

TULSA, Okla. — Nearly one quarter of the bridges on Oklahoma's highway system need to be replaced or overhauled, and hundreds of those projects are still waiting for funding, state records and transportation officials say.

Those conditions are why Oklahoma leads the nation in bridges that are structurally deficient, according to Federal Highway Administration data.

Even though progress has been made in fixing the ancient structures — more than 200 have been overhauled in the past two years — about 1,600 require repair or replacement, and time could become Oklahoma's worst enemy.

"The health of a bridge is like the health of a human being," said Kyran Mish, the director of the Fears Structural Engineering Laboratory at the University of Oklahoma's School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science. "You only have so much life, and you don't know how much life you have left."

The grim report card comes on the sixth anniversary of the Interstate 40 bridge collapse near Webbers Falls in eastern Oklahoma, which killed 14 people.

It also follows the Aug. 1 failure of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minnesota, which hurt 145 people and killed 13.

Last summer's tragedy magnified a national problem: the country's decaying transportation infrastructure.

In the past six months, recent examples have included the December collapse of Pennsylvania's 116-year-old Cambria County bridge after a snow plow passed over it and one county official in Oregon calling for the closing of the 83-year-old Sellwood Bridge, the busiest two-lane crossing in the state.

In Oklahoma, transportation workers are responsible for a state with more bridges than Florida, Michigan or Wisconsin.

Of the 1,600 bridges needing major overhauls or replacement statewide, about 626 have been left off the Oklahoma Department of Transportation's 8-year construction plan for lack of a funding source.

The department estimates a $4 billion backlog worth of bridge projects. The 600-plus unscheduled bridge projects alone eat up about $2.7 billion of that amount.

Mish, who has worked on the design of bridges for 30 years, assigned a grade to Oklahoma's bridge inventory of "a gentleman's C, at best."

"They work, but there's just too much risk associated with them," he said in a recent interview.

On May 26, 2002, 14 people died after barges being pushed by a towboat crashed into the I-40 bridge near Webbers Falls, causing a 500-foot span to collapse into the muddy Arkansas River. Crews working around the clock were able to repair and reopen the bridge in about 65 days.

While the rebuilding took place, interstate traffic had to be rerouted onto aging side roads and bridges — a wake-up call that made state officials realize how bad Oklahoma's infrastructure was.

"We have several hundred bridges that were designed and built before 1932 on the system today," said Gary Ridley, the state's transportation director, who joined the department in 1965 and oversaw the rebuilding of the I-40 bridge. "The significance of that is Henry Ford quit making the Model A in 1932."

Ridley's department appears to have been thrown a lifeline from state lawmakers, who agreed in principle on a $475 million bond issue to repair state roads and bridges and perform other capital improvements. The bulk of the package, $300 million, would go for roads and bridges.

But Ridley says more work must be done to make the public aware of the hundreds of bridge projects remaining.

"I think it would be a misnomer to say the Legislature and governor's office are unaware of the problem," he said. "This is a long-term commitment and we need to have the discipline to stay the course."

Mish believes a funding solution could lie in taxation and user fees, arguing that since bridges and roads belong to everybody, we are all financially responsible for them.

But such a pitch may be unpopular with many Oklahoma motorists.

The alternative is continuing to shell out around $1 billion annually in unnecessary costs to fix their vehicles because of the state's poor infrastructure, he said.

"We don't think about just how important these things are to our state's economy," he said. "You lose a bridge, you lose your ability to go to work, you lose your home.

"It's a big deal," he said.