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An analysis by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) and the US Department of Transportation (USDOT)’s 2015 National Bridge Inventory database has revealed that more than 58,500 bridges are structurally deficient in the country.

The report also reveals that given the current pace of bridge investment, it would take at least two decades before they were all replaced or upgraded.

Every year, ARTBA carries out an analysis of bridge data collected in the USDOT’s National Bridge Inventory database.

ARTBA noted that only around 9.5% of the country’s 610,000 bridges are categorised as structurally deficient, yet vehicles cross these deficient structures nearly 204 million times a day.

"The funding made available won’t come close to making an accelerated national bridge repair programme possible."

The analysis also found that there were 2,574 fewer structurally deficient bridges last year compared with 2014.

Nearly 250 most heavily crossed structurally deficient bridges are on urban highways, especially in California, and almost 85% of them were constructed before 1970.

Iowa has the most number of structurally deficient bridges (5,025), followed by Pennsylvania (4,783), Oklahoma (3,776), Missouri (3,222), Nebraska (2,474), Kansas (2,303), Illinois (2,244), Mississippi (2,184), North Carolina (2,085) and California (2,009).

ARTBA chief economist Dr Alison Premo Black, who conducted the analysis, noted that the recently enacted five-year federal highway and transit law offers a modest increase in funding for bridge repairs.

Black said: "The funding made available won’t come close to making an accelerated national bridge repair programme possible. It’s going to take major new investments by all levels of government to move toward eliminating the huge backlog of bridge work in the US."

Image: It would take 21 years to upgrade the structurally deficient bridges in America. Photo: courtesy of ARTBA.