Let's get off the worst bridges list
Published August 15, 2014
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, August 13, 2014.
The broken record plays on: the Business 40 bridge over Liberty Street ranks No. 2 on AAA Carolinas’ list of the 20 worst bridges in North Carolina for the second year in a row.
And once again, DOT officials tell us that that this bridge in downtown Winston-Salem, built in 1955 and set to be replaced in the next couple of years, is safe for drivers and pedestrians.
Pat Ivey, a division engineer for the N.C. Department of Transportation, recently told the Journal’s John Hinton that the bridge will be part of the planned Business 40 improvement project scheduled to begin in May 2016. H added that DOT crews have done repairs to that bridge and other overpasses along highway through downtown over the past year.
Ivey is a good engineer. So we hope he is correct about the safety part, and that nothing bad happens before this bridge gets its scheduled replacement in 2017. We have the same hopes for other bridges in our county, area and state.
And we urge Gov. Pat McCrory, who has stressed the importance of good transportation infrastructure, to push the legislature toward that goal.
AAA Carolinas annually lists the 20 bridges in the state that are most in need of repair. The Interstate 40/Business 85 bridge over South Buffalo Creek in Greensboro ranked No. 1, Hinton reported.
The bridge on U.S. 52 over U.S. 311 in Forsyth County came in at No. 4, in the AAA Carolina listing. The bridge on U.S. 52 over Diggs Boulevard ranked No. 8. The U.S. 52 bridge over 28th Street in the city came in at 18th.
The average age of the top 20 substandard bridges in the state is 51 years, the AAA group says, and an average of 54,200 vehicles roll over those bridges every day. According to federal data, North Carolina is No. 14 in the country in the number of rural bridges rated structurally deficient.
“While we’ve seen slight improvements in North Carolina's bridges in the last year, we still have a long way to go,” Dave E. Parsons, president and chief executive officer of AAA Carolinas, told the Journal. “We need to find more resources to fund our state's transportation infrastructure needs.”
The N.C. General Assembly has approved about $800 million for bridge improvements, according to AAA Carolinas. But the DOT estimates it would cost $11 billion to repair each of the deficient bridges. It figures it would cost $16 billion to replace those bridges.
Obviously, there’s a shortfall and it all can’t be done at once. But some amount should be applied to getting this work done sooner.
As Parsons said, “The legislature has to recognize that improved condition of our roads and bridges is a major economic incentive for new and continued business.”
