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Summary:
The sudden failure and collapse of the I-35W Interstate System bridge in Minneapolis has raised policy concerns in Congress regarding the condition of the nation's transportation infrastructure in general, and in particular the federal role in funding, building, maintaining, and ensuring the safety of roads and especially bridges in the United States. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) expects to determine probable cause of the collapse by the end of 2008. An interim NTSB finding implicated a flaw in the original bridge design as a contributing factor. Of the 600,000 public road bridges listed in the National Bridge Inventory, roughly 12%, or 72,000, were classified as structurally deficient as of 2007. This is, however, roughly half the number classified as deficient in 1990. Given the I-35W collapse, however, even this lower number of deficient bridges leaves Americans potentially exposed to what some might consider an unacceptable level of risk. A policy question is how quickly can and should the remaining deficient bridges be replaced or improved? At current annual spending levels, roughly $10.5 billion (2004 dollars at all levels of government), the bridge investment backlog (in dollar terms) would be reduced by roughly half by 2024. Reducing the backlog to near zero during the same period would require an estimated annual spending rate of roughly $12.4 billion (in 2004 dollars). The Emergency Relief Program (ER), administered by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), provides funding for bridges damaged in natural disasters or by catastrophic failures. The program provides funds for emergency repairs immediately after the failure to restore essential traffic, as well as for longer-term permanent repairs. The funds, for both the initial cleanup and for the replacement of the I-35W bridge, will come from this program. P.L. 110-56 authorized ER spending for the I-35W bridge. In the broader context, most federal funding, for bridge reconstruction, replacement, or repair of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges, is provided through the FHWA's Highway Bridge Program (HBP). Many credit this program as an important reason for the decline in the number of deficient bridges over the last 15 or so years. Although ER and HBP are federal programs, most of the money provided is under the control of the states. The state departments of transportation let the contracts, oversee the project development and construction process, and, in particular, provide for the inspection of bridges. Among the congressional issues regarding the nation's highway bridge infrastructure are whether to increase spending on deficient bridges and accordingly modify the federal-aid highway programs; whether to enlarge the federal role in bridge inspection; and, within the context of large projected deficits in highway trust fund revenues, how to fund potential increased spending on highway bridges. A bill, H.R. 3999, ordered reported by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, would address some of these issues.
