The collapse of a bridge carrying Interstate Highway 5 in Washington State on Thursday has reignited the debate about America's decaying infrastructure.
Although this collapse was apparently caused by a truck with an oversize load hitting a girder, the bridge was not in great condition to start.
The bridge was inspected last year and received a "sufficiency rating" of 47 out of 100, according to The Wall Street Journal. That's not great, but there are worse bridges out there.
It was not among the 11.5 percent of US bridges, crossed by an average of 282,672,680 vehicles daily, deemed "structurally deficient" by the Federal Highway Administration in 2011.
A rating of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete doesn't mean a bridge is necessarily near collapse. But all of them need work, and many hold up traffic on some of America's busiest roadways.
Using a report from Transportation for America, we have picked out 17 of the most heavily-trafficked, structurally deficient, and functionally obsolete bridges in America.
I-95 over Hendricks Ave. (Jacksonville, Fla.)
172,000 vehicles drive over it every day.
68.3/100 sufficiency rating
According to the FHWA, the bridge's deck is in poor condition.
A sufficiency rating is the FHWA's measure of a bridge's sufficiency to stay in service. Each of these bridges has a rating below 80, which is the threshold below which a bridge is considered deficient or functionally obsolete. Analysis provided by National Bridge Inventory and Transportation For America.
I-64 ramp at River Rd. (Louisville, Ky.)
144,000 vehicles drive over it every day.
66/100 sufficiency rating
The bridge is rated "functionally obsolete, meaning that it is "no longer by design functionally adequate for its task."
A sufficiency rating is the FHWA's measure of a bridge's sufficiency to stay in service. Each of these bridges has a rating below 80, which is the threshold below which a bridge is considered deficient or functionally obsolete. Analysis provided by National Bridge Inventory and Transportation For America.
I-35E over Pennsylvania Ave. (St. Paul, Minn.)
154,000 vehicles drive over it every day.
64/100 sufficiency rating
According to the FHWA, the bridge's deck, superstructure, and substructure are in poor condition.
A sufficiency rating is the FHWA's measure of a bridge's sufficiency to stay in service. Each of these bridges has a rating below 80, which is the threshold below which a bridge is considered deficient or functionally obsolete. Analysis provided by National Bridge Inventory and Transportation For America.
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