Yet Another Obligatory Post On Infrastructure

News reports are flooding the airwaves over the poor condition of roads around the country, and of specific interest to me is those in the New York City metro region. None of this should be surprising. I've been writing about the crumbling infrastructure in the region, including subways and tunnels, mass transit and transportation in general, the power grid (including blackouts and energy policy), ever since I started this blog.

The number of bridges considered obsolete in New York or New Jersey is about 25% of all bridges - double the number found in Minnesota. And Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia are even worse. There are simply many more bridges in New York and New Jersey and many of them are older. However, that's no excuse for either state to shirk its responsibility to maintain all its infrastructure.

It isn't glamorous or sexy, but it is crucial, vital, and absolutely necessary.

Would it surprise you that the approach spans to the Brooklyn Bridge are considered in poor condition? They're more likely functionally obsolete - carrying more traffic than they were designed for and whose condition has degraded over time. They need to be replaced. Several years back, New York City built a special arch bridge under part of the Manhattan approach to support a deck truss span and keep the entire bridge open and safe. NY1 reports on the condition of the Brooklyn Bridge, but gets the math wrong:

Transportation officials say all of the 787 bridges maintained by the city met federal and state safety standards in their most recent inspections last year, however three are considered to be in poor condition, including the 150-year-old Brooklyn Bridge.

DOT officials insist the span itself is safe, and say the problems deal with joints on the ramps leading to the bridge itself.

"The rating could involve different parts of the bridge and it depends what parts we're talking about and how it pertains to the structural integrity to the whole system,” said Michel Ghosn, a professor of civil engineering at the City College of New York. “So if it's just one part, that does not mean the whole bridge is about to collapse."

The city has scheduled renovations on the Brooklyn Bridge for 2010.

The Brooklyn Bridge was completed May 1883. It is 2007. That makes the bridge 124 years old - not 150 years old. The sections with the serious concerns are the approach spans, which are much younger than the rest of the bridge.

So, what are the worst bridges in the nation? These:

Half of the 20 bridges are located in New Jersey and California, including the famous San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (pictured above).

The New Jersey Route-21 Bridge over the I-80 corridor is the busiest, with more than 518,000 daily commuters and a 49 percent sufficiency rating. The lowest rated bridge is the Raritan River Smith Street Bridge in New Jersey which 208,000 commuters drive across daily. It earned a rating of only 20 percent.

The Federal Highway Administration's sufficiency rating serves only as a guideline and does not mean that a bridge is necessarily unsafe.

20 Most Deficient, Heavily-Trafficked Bridges:

20.2%. New Jersey: Raritan River Smith St. Bridge over the Garden State Parkway. Daily commuter load of 208,000.

23.6%. New Jersey: Elizabeth River Bridge over the Garden State Parkway. Daily commuter load of 198,200.

27.2%. New Jersey: Port Reading Bridge over Grove Avenue. Daily commuter load of 191,530.

32%. New York: Lee Avenue Bridge (Section A) over Route I-278. Daily commuter load of 202,650.

32.1%. California: San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (Ala-Oak) over I-80. Daily commuter load of 277,700.

32.1%. Hawaii: Kapalama Canal over Halona Street. Daily commuter load of 211,528.

34%. New York: Joralemon Street Bridge over Route I-278. Daily commuter load of 202,650.

35%. Illinois: Stewart Avenue Bridge over I-90. Daily commuter load of 238,500.

36%. Colorado: South Platte River Bridge over I-25ML. Daily commuter load of 208,353.

42.5%. Virginia: Boundary Channel Bridge over Shirley Memorial Highway. Daily commuter load of 210,993.

46.3%. Georgia: Banberry Road Bridge over I-75. Daily commuter load of 266,060.

46.3%. California: San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (SF section) over I-80. Daily commuter load of 204,900.

46.3%. New Jersey: Elizabeth River Bridge over Garden State Parkway. Daily commuter load of 198,200.

47%. California: 5th Avenue Bridge over I-880. Daily commuter load of 240,000.

48%. California: Noakes Street Bridge over I-710. Daily commuter load of 240,000.

49%.New Jersey: Route-21 Bridge over I-280. Daily commuter load of 518,100.

49%. California: Bayshore Viaduct over Rte 101. Daily commuter load of 256,700.

49%. New York: Lee Avenue Bridge (Section C) over I-278. Daily commuter load of 202,650.

49%. Massachusetts: Cape Cod Canal over Route 28. Daily commuter load of 195,000.

50%. California: Metrolink over I-710. Daily commuter load of 235,440.

As I have said before, maintenance and daily repair and oversight isn't glamorous but it's crucial to maintaining the safety and integrity of the transportation infrastructure.

UPDATE:
It didn't take long for some to start linking Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing tax to the Minneapolis bridge collapse- the need to provide dedicated funding for infrastructure maintenance, repair, and replacement as needed. Indeed, as Ms. Cohen points out, Bloomberg's own plan makes a point of mentioning the importance of providing upgrades to the infrastructure.

Mayor Bloomberg addresses these problems in his PlaNYC. That strategic plan for a "sustainable" city of 2030 includes specific priorities for upgrading the transport, energy and water networks that make the city work.

Indeed, the largest expenditure of revenues - more than $15 billion - from the mayor's proposed congestion-pricing program would be to bring transportation infrastructure to a "state of good repair." This includes roads and bridges maintained by the city Department of Transportation, as well as the subway's stations and vital hidden systems - power, signals, ventilation, pumping, etc.

More and more, to achieve a state of good repair requires going beyond in-kind repairs and replacements - to reinforcing the bones and upgrading the brains.

Rebuilding a bridge deck today means accounting for modern traffic levels and the extra weight of trucks, vans and SUVs. Replacing an obsolete subway signaling system means upgrading from century-old technology to solid-state switches and communications-based train control. Such a "CBTC" is under way now on the "L" line.

Installing that new system has been difficult - with the delays and cost overruns that mark most new-technology projects - but when completed, it will allow trains to run more frequently on that now-crowded line. The No. 7 line will get the upgrade next.

Investments like these are necessary to enable the city to grow in a healthy and responsible - yes, "sustainable" - way.

And all of that is just concerned with keeping what already exists operational. As the city grows by a million residents between now and 2030, infrastructure networks will have to be expanded and whole new neighborhoods built - complete with roads, transit, sewage systems, water mains, electrical substations and the rest. And then all of that infrastructure will have to be maintained as well.

It also didn't take long for the political blame game to get going. The Democrats/progressives are pushing the meme that Republican doctrine is responsible for the bridge collapse. Really? They know what caused the collapse before the NTSB or other investigators? By all means, share it. Oh wait - it's because taxes were not high enough. Gotcha. Never mind that it is the legislature - whether in state or fed that is responsible for appropriations, not the executive (politics 101 is foreign to these folks). If they didn't think that the budget for transportation was sufficient, the legislatures - and in Minnesota it is dominated by Democrats - could have added to the budget. They didn't.

Further, what if it is shown that the failure was due to the fact that when the bridge was designed and completed in 1967, that the design itself was the reason for the collapse? Democrats were in charge at that time. We already know that this particular design doesn't have redundancies built into the structure so that if a specific section fails, other sections could carry the load. When those critical sections fail, the whole structure can fail.

What I'm getting at is that this blame game wont get very far, and it surely wont be productive either. It might score political points for a few people, but the safety of millions of Americans wont be enhanced one iota. Ensuring that people truly prioritize maintenance on these bridges and structures over spending on other programs that are of dubious intent at best is the only way to improve the safety and reliability of the infrastructure.