Preface.  As I explained in my book “When Trucks Stop Running”, if diesel fuel ran out, civilization would end within a week as grocery shelves, pharmacies, gas stations, and all other businesses ran out of supplies. The millions of miles of roads and tens of thousands of bridges that trucks drive on were built at a time when the energy return on energy invested of oil was 100 to 1.  Since global oil production may have peaked in 2018, the most important bridges need to be fixed ASAP before oil is rationed to agriculture and essential services.

Even London Bridge is falling down (Landler 2020).

Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com  author of “Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy”, April 2021, Springer, “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity , XX2 report

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ARTBA (2020) ARTBA Bridge Report. American Road and Transportation Builders Association.

• There are 178 million daily crossings on over 46,100 structurally deficient U.S. bridges in poor condition.
• At the current rate, it would take 50 years to fix all of the nation’s structurally deficient bridges.
• If placed end-to-end, the length of bridges in need of repair would stretch over 6,300 miles– long enough to make a round trip across the country from New York City to Los Angeles and back again to Chicago.
• 1 in 3 bridges on the Interstate needs repair work.
• ARTBA has many maps and lists of the states and bad bridges here.

Brady J (2019) New Bridge Data Supports C+ Report Card Grade. American Society of Civil Engineers.

The states with the most structurally deficient bridges, as a percent of their total bridge inventory, are Rhode Island (23%); West Virginia (19.8%); Iowa (19.3%); South Dakota (16.7%); Pennsylvania (16.5%); Maine (13.1%); Louisiana (13%); Puerto Rico (11.7%); Oklahoma (10.9%); and North Dakota (10.7%).

States with the largest number of structurally deficient bridges are Iowa (4,675 bridges); Pennsylvania (3,770); Oklahoma (2,540); Illinois (2,273); Missouri (2,116); North Carolina (1,871); California (1,812); New York (1,757); Louisiana (1,678); and Mississippi (1,603).

The subpar condition of our bridges is a result of an inability to properly fund our current bridge needs, with the most recent estimate putting our nation’s backlog of bridge rehabilitation needs at $123 billion. ASCE recommends that if we want to raise our bridge grade from a “C+”, we must:

• Fix the federal Highway Trust Fund by raising the federal motor fuels tax by 25 cents. States must ensure their funding mechanisms (motor fuels taxes or other) are sufficient to fund needed investment in bridges.
• Increase funding from all levels of government to continue reducing the number of structurally deficient bridges, decrease the maintenance backlog, and address the large number of bridges that have passed or are approaching the end of their design life.
• Have bridge owners consider the costs across a bridge’s entire lifecycle to make smart design decisions and prioritize maintenance and rehabilitation
• States should ensure their funding mechanisms (motor fuels taxes or other) are sufficient to fund needed investment in bridges.
• States and the federal government should consider long-term funding solutions for transportation infrastructure and potential alternatives to the motor fuel taxes, including further study and piloting of mileage-based user fees.

References

Landler M (2020) London’s Bridges Really Are Falling Down. Three major crossings on the Thames are closed to cars — one of them considered too dangerous even to walk across. Even the landmark Tower Bridge was recently shut for two days.  New York Times.