Fixing It First

PennPIRG Education Fund

America’s infrastructure is showing its age. Our nation’s roads, highways and bridges have increasingly received failing scores on maintenance and upkeep. For the nation’s bridges, lack of maintenance can result in the sudden closure of a critical transportation link or, far worse, a collapse that results in lost lives and a significant loss in regional economic productivity.
More than 69,000 structurally deficient U.S. bridges span across the federally supported highway system, monuments of our nation’s past prosperity and evidence of its misplaced priorities in recent years. Congress needs to declare the repair of these bridges to be an urgent priority, dedicate funding to their repair, and ensure that states are accountable for repairing these vital assets and knocking down the repair backlog. In addition to building shared prosperity for the future, prioritizing bridge repair will add thousands of jobs that our economy needs.
The repair backlog is tremendous. Every minute of every day, an American driver crosses a bridge somewhere in the U.S. that is “structurally deficient” according to government standards. One out of every four bridges in Pennsylvania is likely to be deficient, for a total of 5,906 deficient bridges. An unacceptable 26.5 percent of bridges statewide are rated structurally deficient, compared to 11.5 percent nationwide.
According to 2009 inspection data and costs, Pennsylvania would need $7.81 billion to bring all of our bridges into a state of good repair. By comparison, Pennsylvania spent $464 million total on bridge repair and replacement in 2008. There’s a clear need for robust investment in repairing and replacing our bridges.
Out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania ranks worst nationally in terms of the overall condition of the state’s bridges.
Prioritizing repair could save billions of dollars in the future while creating thousands of additional jobs today. Past underinvestment in repair and diversion of maintenance funds toward building new highways does more than allow existing roads and bridges to slip into disrepair. It also ultimately costs state and local governments billions more than would the cost of regular, timely repair. Over a 25-year period, deferring maintenance of bridges and highways can cost three times as much as preventative repairs. “Fixing it first” is also a smarter investment for creating jobs: repair work on roads and bridges generates 16 percent more jobs than new bridge and road construction.