Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 21, 1994 TAG: 9405220013
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Swallows swoop under the Tinker Creek bridge lugging building materials to their nests, perched along the bridge's crumbling concrete supports.
About 12,000 people a day drive over the bridge on U.S. 11 at Cloverdale in Botetourt County, probably without noticing the crack that runs through the asphalt, or how the railing is bowed out over the water in one spot where it appears to have been hit by a car.
More noticeable are the iron bars that are supposed to be hidden inside the concrete railings, but which are quite visible in places where the concrete has fallen away.
One end of the Tinker Creek bridge bears a long-tarnished copper marker with the state seal and "1938" engraved on it.
The Virginia Department of Transportation's inspectors rate the bridge in poor condition. At 56, the bridge has been kept in service past the typical lifespan of 50 years. As of now, there's no money to replace it.
On the department's list of deficient bridges in the Roanoke region, you don't come to Radford's Memorial Bridge, which was shut down for repairs last month, until halfway down the second page.
That's because one of every four bridges in the local VDOT area is deficient, meaning they fall short structurally of what they're intended to do. That's a bit higher than the national rate - 22 percent of all U.S. bridges are structurally deficient.
The bridges are safe, Fred Altizer of VDOT says, but they can no State inspectors rate one of every four bridges in the Roanoke region as structurally deficient. longer carry the loads they were built to carry. Often, deficient bridges are posted, reducing the weight load vehicles can drive across with.
"Any bridge you see today you can rest assured is safe," said Altizer, the district administrator for VDOT's 12-county Salem district, which runs from Botetourt to Henry counties and Giles to Carroll. But, he added, "Many are at or exceeding their life expectancy."
On average, motorists drive over a bridge every four miles, often without noticing them. They should be able to take their bridges for granted, Virginia Tech Professor Richard Weyers says.
"The general public shouldn't have to think about whether this bridge is going to stand up as they go across it," he said.
Many of Southwest Virginia's bridges face common problems: they were built 40 or 50 years ago - after World War II, when steel was scarce and bridges were built just to the standard of the day. Traffic volume and truck weights were lower then.
"A lot of things got built fast to put people back to work after the war," VDOT spokeswoman Laura Bullock said, and that includes Memorial Bridge. "We're sort of having to pay the price for what I'm sure was seen as a very economical way of getting people back to work and building up the infrastructure."
Federal regulations require states to inspect every bridge at least every two years. Many bridges in Virginia are inspected every year, and some that may show problems - such as Memorial Bridge - are inspected more than once a year.
But factors besides deficiency ratings and numerical rankings go into deciding a bridge repair's priority.
The bridge over Big Otter Creek on Virginia 43 in Bedford County, for instance, had the fourth-highest deficiency rating in the district before repairs were made this spring. A new bridge has been requested. Because fewer than 3,000 cars a day use it, replacing that bridge is not as high a priority as a bridge that handles 10 times more traffic would be.
"It will continue to get maintenance; the weight limit may go down," Altizer said. "Till one day it finally gets to the point we're able to get it in the six-year plan."
The six-year plan is VDOT's schedule of construction. Projects don't make the list until money is set aside for them.
The Big Otter Creek bridge recently had work done to correct scour, or underwater erosion, that afflicts a lot of bridges standing in water. But there was so much erosion that the bridge settled, Bullock said, and now there's a visible dip in one lane as cars go over it. Contractors at some point will have to jack the bridge up to fix the dip.
While a number of the region's bridges are exceeding their expected lifespan, limited resources and the amount of bridges in need force engineers to make tough choices.
"Say a problem is found on a bridge that carries 50 vehicles a day," Bullock said. "Maybe we'd post it and let it go for a while."
Because Southwest Virginia has three major drainage basins - the James, the Holston and the New rivers - it needs a lot of bridges. And nearly 20 percent of the entire state's deficient bridges are in this VDOT district. But that is not taken into consideration by the state when it divvies up road money, which is allocated according to a formula that can be changed only by the General Assembly.
The district gets about $20 million a year for construction. That goes not just for bridges but for roads, which tend to have a higher priority with the public.
To replace Memorial Bridge would take $10 million to $12 million, Bullock said, eating up more than half a year's allocation for the 12-county region. If VDOT started setting aside money annually for a new bridge now, it still could be years before construction began.
Memorial Bridge will undergo an extensive study to see if it needs to be replaced. But there are probably 25 bridges in this district that have a higher priority for replacement if you go by the numbers, Altizer said.
The problem isn't unique to Virginia.
"Bridges are sort of the Achille's heel of our infrastructure," said Henry Jasny of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a Washington lobbying group and think tank made up of insurance companies and consumer groups.
"They're the weakest link in the chain. It doesn't matter how good your roads are if your bridges are crumbling."
He said a lack of maintenance for 25 years and larger, heavier trucks have "knocked the heck out of a lot of bridges." To repair all of the nation's bridges would cost $78 billion; less than $2 billion is allocated for repairs, Jasny said.
Is America facing a public safety problem as many of its bridges reach the end of their useful lives?
"We need the government to take notice that . . . this is a severe problem for America's infrastructure," Jasny said.
Weyers says the United States has begun paying more attention to bridges in recent years, but a massive infusion of dollars will be needed for repairs to maintain safety and economic competitiveness.
"We are barely keeping up with the deterioration rate now," he said.
Weyers heads Tech's Center for Infrastructure Assessment and Management, which just completed a five-year federal study and produced a manual that states will use when fixing concrete bridges. He created a model that can predict how long bridges will last and the least expensive solution to repair them.
VDOT's money is separated into two pots: construction, for new roads and bridges; and maintenance. No separate pot of money exists for bridges, meaning that they have to compete for money against roads.
"The only way to get a bridge replaced is through the construction program," said VDOT district maintenance engineer Allen Williams. "We're asking, begging, for some to be funded through maintenance - which normally isn't the way they get money."
The way VDOT's process works, public input plays an important role, Williams said. "They have to balance what the engineers say with what the public wants. And bridges aren't as appealing."
Jasny agrees: "People on a daily basis are more worried about potholes."
Despite his deep knowledge of deficiency ratings and problems with bridges, Weyers said he doesn't worry about driving on Southwest Virginia's bridges.
"I don't think about them," he said. "The reason I feel safe is that we do have an inspection program and the inspection program is working."
Memorial Bridge's closing was a good example of the inspection program at work, he said. It also showed the economic blow one bridge closing can have.
No bridge in VDOT's Salem district that was bearing a legal load has ever collapsed, Williams said. And regular inspections are supposed to catch problems before they get to the point of emergency shutdowns.
"We don't want to live on the edge," Williams said. "We don't want to get to the point where we ever have to close a bridge again. We hope we never have to do that."
by CNB