Traffic makes its way into Manhattan from Brooklyn over a bridge in New York on March 28. (Photo: AP)

Lawmakers agree on the need to fix infrastructure, but not on how to pay for it

Crumbling bridges in the United States are in dire need of repair, according to a report and the former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, but it could take 80 years to fix them.

An analysis by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association of the recently released US Department of Transportation 2018 National Bridge Inventory database showed that 47,052 bridges－nearly 8 percent of the nation's 616,087 bridges－are "structurally deficient", which means the bridge needs repairs but is not unsafe for public travel.

Of that total number, 1,800 are interstate bridges crossed 60 million times daily, according to the report.

The number of structurally deficient bridges is actually down about 7,000 from last year's report, the association said.

The Washington-based ARTBA is a non-partisan organization which advocates investment in transportation infrastructure, analyzes data from the Federal Highway Administration and releases an annual Deficient Bridge report.

Bridges are regularly inspected for safety on a scale of zero to nine. Structurally deficient means that one of four key elements of the bridge is rated a four, which is poor, or below.

Before, bridges could also be classified as structurally deficient if their overall structural evaluation was rated four or lower, or if they had insufficient waterway openings.

"The new definition does make a difference," ARTBA Chief Economist Alison Black said. "About 6,500 bridges that would've been structurally deficient are not under this (new) definition."

The structurally deficient bridges provide 174 million crossings for travelers each day, and if placed end-to-end, they would stretch 1,957 kilometers, or nearly the distance between Miami and New York City, ARTBA said.

The five states with the largest number of structurally deficient bridges are: Iowa (5,067), Pennsylvania (4,173), Oklahoma (3,234), Missouri (3,086) and Illinois (2,303), according to the ARTBA report.

The five states with the most structurally deficient bridges as a percentage of their total bridge inventory, are: Rhode Island (23 percent), West Virginia (19.8 percent), Iowa (19.3 percent), South Dakota (16.7 percent) and Pennsylvania (16.5 percent).

Notable structurally deficient bridges in 2018, according to the report, include New York's Brooklyn Bridge, the Memorial Bridge at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington connecting with Arlington, Virginia, and the San Mateo-Hayward bridge crossing San Francisco Bay, the longest bridge in California.

"It will take 80 years to repair bridges at present funding levels," Andy Herman, former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a bridge expert, told China Daily. "The average age of our bridges across the country is about 43 years old. When those bridges were designed, they probably had a 50-year design life."

Fortunately, he said, the bridges are required by federal laws to be inspected at least twice a year.

"If they find something really bad, they can close the bridge,... do some emergency repairs or reduce the load limit on a bridge, ... to keep the traveling public safe.

"Most of the bridges in the country are not owned by the federal government, they're owned by states or counties and even private owners," said Herman.

"So those owners are the ones responsible for keeping the bridges in good repair and inspecting them, but the state departments of transportation get funding from the federal government, so getting those funds from Congress has a lot to do with how fast they can repair them."

Over the past few years, there have been a series of bridge collapses in different states. In March 2018, a new 950-ton pedestrian bridge at Florida International University fell onto vehicles on a busy highway killing six people. A year earlier, part of Interstate 85 in Atlanta collapsed after a fire raged underneath an overpass. Authorities said no one was hurt or killed.

A spokeswoman for the FHWA, an agency within the US Transportation department, told China Daily: "Bridge conditions in the United States have steadily improved over the years due to increased investment by bridge owners."

"All states have a maintenance and preservation plan in place to ensure necessary repairs are addressed. Under the national bridge inspection program, necessary repairs or correction action must be taken, when needed, for the bridge to remain open," said the spokeswoman.

$4.6 trillion needed

The ASCE estimates that $4.6 trillion is needed to repair the country's infrastructure, including four million miles of damaged roads and decaying bridges.

Last month, US President Donald Trump unveiled his $4.7 trillion 2020 budget proposal and included a request for $1.5 trillion toward infrastructure by spending $200 billion in federal investment over 10 years.

Elizabeth McNichol wrote in March for the Center on Budget and Priorities－a nonpartisan research and policy institute that analyzes federal budget priorities－that the budget would reduce "total federal funding for infrastructure in the long run" and that "the $1.5 trillion number simply assumes that state and local governments and the private sector will provide $1.3 trillion in support".

In Congress, everyone agrees infrastructure needs fixing, but there is little agreement on how to pay for it.

The federal gas tax has been 18.4 cents per gallon (3.79 liters) and 24.4 cents for diesel fuel since 1993. If Congress raised the tax by 25 cents to 43.4 cents per gallon, as advocated by the US Chamber of Commerce and the American Trucking Associations, it would raise approximately $291 billion over the next 10 years.

From 2013-18, at least 28 states raised their own gas tax. But raising the federal tax to fix infrastructure brings with it facing voters in the 2020 election for Congress and the White House.

Before Democrats took back the House in November, they vowed to work on a bipartisan bill to repair infrastructure.

On the 2020 presidential campaign trail, Democrat Amy Klobuchar pledged $1 trillion to fix infrastructure, in part, by raising corporate taxes from 21 percent to 25 percent, if she wins the White House.

It was the first policy proposal from the Minnesota senator following the launch of her campaign close to where a bridge on Interstate 35W collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007, killing 13 people.

"A bridge just shouldn't fall down in the middle of America," Klobuchar said.