Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/748269
in the northern half of the state, which can lead to an escalation in the rate of deterioration of bridge elements if they are not properly protected. The $14 million allows the department to develop ap- proximately 50 minor rehabilitation and/or preventive maintenance projects per year." Not so FAST The Fixing America's Surface Trans- portation (FAST) Act, passed late last year, finally gave the highway industry a multi-year funding bill. So, we wondered: Has this money had a positive impact at the state level on the near term future of bridge improvements? Interestingly, the responses were quite mixed among state bridge officials. Only 46.7 percent of our respondents said yes, with another 40 percent indicating no. Utah DOT's (UDOT) Rebecca Nix, bridge program manager, is opti- mistic about the FAST Act's benefits. "The new flexibility of National Highway Performance Program (NHPP) funding through the FAST Act – allowing NHPP funds to be expended on any bridge on a Federal Aid route – will allow Utah to better allocate funds to the most critical repairs in our entire system, rather than just the most critical repairs on the National Highway System," she says. But South Dakota DOT's Schultz feels the FAST Act isn't significant in the context of her state's bridge improvements. "There are no dedicated funds for bridges in the FAST Act," she says. "Federal funds require compliance with complex environmental restrictions that take time and resources to manuever through." Other factors Preservation and maintenance came in as the second most common response to our question regard- ing their top obstacle to improving bridges, accounting for 26.9 percent of the total responses. This is simi- lar to last year's 24.9 percent total. Paul Kulseth, bridge manage- ment engineer for the Kansas DOT, believes a polymer overlay system for sealing bridge decks would be the best form of preservation in his state, indicating such work would protect the existing deck while sealing out water intrusion. "This would reduce the amount of patching needed on a future project," he says. "The less money we spend on maintenance, the more money is available for re- placement or major rehabilitation." However, limitations on the overlay system's use, which Kansas has been implementing since the 1990s, comes back to funding. "Unfortunately, it is somewhat of a luxury item that is not appro- priate to apply on a widespread basis in the current budge climate," Kulseth says. "If we had more available funding and could act on a proactive basis instead of a reactive basis, we would apply the system to more bridge decks. In the long run, if we can apply it at the appropriate time, we would spend less money preserving our overlays and decks instead of just letting them go until they are in bad enough condition that replace- ment of the overlay or deck is necessary." How the states stack up Overall, the percentage of SD/FO bridges held steady compared to last year, with 20.7 percent of all interstate and state bridges and 22.7 percent of all city/county bridges classified SD/FO. In order to align with the Fed- eral Highway Administration's (FHWA) initiative to move away from the SD/FO ratings, this year we asked DOTs to rank their bridges as good, fair and poor. FHWA has yet to make a final decision on exactly how these ratings will be defined, but many states are already using their own methodology. Of the 33 states that reported their good/fair/ poor numbers, 48.3 percent of the bridges in those states were rated as good, 41.9 percent fair and 9.8 percent poor. November 2016 | EquipmentWorld.com 20 bridge inventory | continued INTERSTATE / STATE VS. CITY / COUNTY / TOWNSHIP U.S. INTERSTATE/STATE BRIDGES OUT OF A TOTAL OF 295,762 U.S. CITY/COUNTY/TOWNSHIP BRIDGES OUT OF A TOTAL OF 307,858 BRIDGE TOTALS SD/FO 20.7 % 61,072 SD 5.7 % 16,775 FO 15.0 % 44,295 SD/FO 22.7 % 69,725 SD 12.2 % 37,689 FO 10.4 % 32,036