 100vw, 300px”/><figcaption id=)
Here’s a startling and hard statistic that should stop all Americans: Of the nearly 617,000 bridges across the United States, 231,000 are at risk of collapsing. The potential damage, not just to the travel audience, but to local real estate markets, is staggering.
As we emerge from the global pandemic, we are in the early stages of what will be a $30 trillion urban boom over the next several decades, including repairing and replacing old infrastructure and developing and redeveloping new cities as Americans reshape their work/life balance and transition, including Continuous rise in the sun belt.
However, while all bridge collapses are horrific events, not all of them have the same economic impact. For example, the tragic I-35W crash in 2007 killed 13 people and injured 145 by falling 100 feet into the Mississippi River. A study by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) concluded that road user costs due to unavailability of a river crossing were $400,000 per day. Additional analysis by Mn/DOT estimated the loss to the Minnesota economy at approximately $17 million in 2007 and $43 million in 2008. It also cost the federal government $235 million to rebuild the massive I-35W bridge.
Meanwhile, the half-century-old Fern Hollow Bridge that collapsed in Pittsburgh on January 28, 2022 meant total disruption for many businesses along this road that carried 14,000 suburban residents daily and commercial traffic to and from the business district central. . However, a recent study showed that there was no impact on the residential markets in and around Pittsburgh, while home values increased by 14.5 percent over the past year.
Prior to the collapse, the Fern Hollow Bridge was classified in poor condition, according to PennDOT, and while minor repairs were made in 2018, the more costly work of providing needed support to critical parts of the bridge was not done.
Briefly looking at the I-35W and Fern Hollow bridges, both provided direct access to downtown areas, college campuses, and suburban destinations. But the I-35W, with its eight lanes, carried more than 140,000 vehicles each day. The Fern Hollow Bridge carries a small number of cars per day (14,000), along with two bus routes that operate approximately 200 trips each day. The collapse did not result in deaths and injuries to ten people.
In contrast to the collapse of the I-35W, a similar study has not yet been conducted regarding the economic impact of the collapse of Fern Hollow. And while under President Biden’s infrastructure plan, $23.5 million in federal funding has already been made available to begin removing debris and preparing for a new bridge, the total cost of replacing the bridge remains undetermined.
questionable structures
However, prior to the collapse, both bridges were classified as structurally defective, meaning that they no longer had the structural integrity to carry the original number of vehicles for which they were designed due to extensive fault lines, corrosion, and other damage to their original design.
Most importantly, both bridges were considered “critical to break”. A critical fracture bridge is a bridge designed without additional support to prevent collapse if one of the support elements fails. Hence, for many years, there were red-light warning signs for federal and local DOT engineers that would have been reasonably expected if critical repairs and maintenance were not performed.
This means that collapses could and should have been avoided, but government indifference to these and other dangerous bridges has prevailed for the past 40 years.
For context, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has deemed there are 18,000 critical bridges to break across the United States, all of which are liable to collapse at any moment. The bridge’s engineers have been calling for repairs for decades to avoid loss of life and massive disruption to local economies and property markets.
In New York, for example, the recent replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge cost more than $4 billion, a budget that skyrocketed due to avoidable delays, draining local budgets that could have been spent elsewhere.
As Americans, we tend to only care about bridges when they collapse, so consider: In the United States today, 42% of all bridges are at least 50 years old, and the average age is 44. Among these bridges, approximately 50,000 bridges are considered structurally defective, meaning they are in “disrepair” condition. Passengers make 178 million trips daily across these structurally flawed bridges. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently estimated that the backlog of bridge repair needs in the country is $125 billion. At the current investment rate, it will take until 2071 to make the repairs that are currently needed.
Moreover, as we continue to recover from the pandemic, our ability to develop and repair our built environment is under further stress due to global supply chain issues. The national and local real estate markets are already grappling with the lack of available building materials.
If you are already frustrated with the resulting price increases and shipping delays, what do you think would happen to both if trucks carrying these goods traveled across bridges that ended up collapsing? And how long will it take to repair or replace these bridges, and reopen these roads? Passenger traffic can also be seriously affected, causing a ripple effect on local economies.
Every local real estate market is distinct, and a third of the bridges that allow transportation to and from those markets are listed as endangered. Whether or not the bridge collapse will have a major impact on the local real estate market is upfront, but one thing is clear: We have a huge problem that we’re all too well aware of. The question is whether we have the will to do anything about it.
Barry B. He is the author of Too Big to Fall: America’s Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward (University of New England Press, 2010), which highlighted the perilous nature of our crumbling roads and bridges.
