Over 600 Crumbling Bridges In Virginia, Report Lists

Virginia traffic is legendary, filled with cars, trucks and buses on its highway and bridges, and hundreds of them have key elements in need of repair, which comes with a hefty price tag. There are more than 600 structurally deficient bridges in Virginia. The most heavily traveled span listed in need of repairs is a section of Interstate 95 in Chesterfield County over Route 608, which sees 96,904 crossings every day.

The American Road and Transportation Builders Association, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, published its annual bridge report last week. The group ranked Virginia 39th worst in the nation for percent of structurally deficient bridges.

Here’s what they found for Virginia's bridges:

• Total bridges: 13,931
• Structurally deficient bridges: 646
• Percent of bridges that are structurally deficient: 4.6%
• Number of bridges in need of repair: 6,555
• Cost to repair those bridges: $8.3 billion

The state has made some improvement since 2014, when 6,735 bridges were listed as needing repairs. Twenty-eight of the crumbling bridges are on the Interstate highway system.

See the list of Virginia bridges with the heaviest traffic loads most in need of repair here.

Among the 10 busiest bridges deemed structurally deficient in the state, several are in northern Virginia. They are:

• Arlington County, 96,888 daily crossings, Custis Mem. Hwy. over Ramps B & F
• Alexandria, 81,495 crossings, NBL Route 395 over & Ramp F O Four Mile Run
• Stafford County, 72,560 crossings, NBL Rte. I-95 over Rte. 17
• Stafford County, 70,840 crossings, SBl Rte. I-95 over Rte. 17
• Alexandria, 61,556 crossings,Duke Street over Route I-395

The 2019 bridge report found there are more than 47,000 bridges rated “structurally deficient” and in urgent need of repairs. Americans cross these bridges — which were built an average of 62 years ago — 178 million times a day.

“If placed end-to-end, they would stretch nearly 1,100 miles — the distance between Chicago and Houston,” the report stated.

While that number may sound like a lot, the total number of structurally deficient bridges has fallen by about 1 percentage point since 2014 to 7.6 percent. And it would take decades to repair them all.

“At this rate, it would take over 80 years to make the significant repairs needed on these structures,” the report stated.

Some of the notable bridges deemed structurally deficient include:

• New York’s Brooklyn Bridge
• Memorial Bridge connecting Washington, D.C. with Arlington, Virginia
• San Mateo-Hayward bridge crossing California’s San Francisco Bay – the longest bridge in the state.
• Robert S. Maestri Bridge over Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana
• Albemarle Sound Bridge and the Lindsay C. Warren Bridge crossing the Alligator River in North Carolina
• Florida’s Pensacola Bay Bridge
• Vicksburg Bridge in Mississippi
• Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge in Washington state

Rhode Island had the highest percentage of structurally deficient bridges at 23 percent. West Virginia, Iowa, South Dakota and Pennsylvania rounded out the top five.

According to the Federal Highway Administration’s website, the definition of structurally deficient was changed in 2018. The new definition limits the classification to bridges where one key structural element, such as the deck, superstructure, substructure or culverts, was rated in poor or worse condition. All of the data above, including those for previous years, uses the new definition.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.