Troubled waters for Pa. bridges
In the southeastern region, PennDot rates 404 spans as "structurally deficient." That is the same rating as the ill-fated Minnesota bridge.
River Road, the bucolic, winding Bucks County highway along the Delaware River, has more troubled bridges than any road in Southeastern Pennsylvania, according to state data released yesterday.
River Road, a favorite of autumn leaf viewers and weekend visitors, has 16 bridges rated as bad as or worse than the Minnesota bridge that collapsed this month.
Throughout the five-county Pennsylvania region, there are 404 bridges that, like the Minnesota bridge, are designated "structurally deficient" and rated at or below 50 percent on a sufficiency scale.
The local bridges are among 25,000 state-owned bridges identified Monday, along with their condition ratings, in a list released by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. PennDot had refused for months to release bridge-safety ratings of state-owned bridges, but agreed to make them public after the Minnesota collapse.
The low-rated bridges are all safe, PennDot officials said.
"The bottom line remains that if a bridge is found to be unsafe, it is closed, and if a bridge can only carry certain weights, it's posted with limits," PennDot secretary Allen D. Biehler said in a statement yesterday.
The low-rated bridges range from little-used, centuries-old rural spans to heavily traveled urban interstate bridges.
The oldest on the list is historic Cope's Bridge over the east branch of Brandywine Creek in Chester County. The bridge on Strasburg Road was built in 1807.
Bucks County has the most low-rated bridges in the region, with 140 that are "structurally deficient" and have sufficiency ratings at 50 or below. Montgomery County has 88 such bridges, Chester County 85, Philadelphia 55, and Delaware County 36.
Charles H. Martin, chairman of the Bucks County commissioners, said yesterday that Bucks County may have more waterways and bridges than neighboring counties. And he said River Road is a victim of frequent flooding that may increase damage to its bridges.
Most of the lowest-rated bridges in the five-county area are posted with weight limits, and many are scheduled to be replaced within the next five years.
Inspectors give each bridge a sufficiency rating on a 0-to-100 scale, using a formula that evaluates safety, serviceability, and how essential the bridge is. And they assign a condition rating for each of its three primary components - deck, superstructure and substructure - on a 0-to-9 scale, from "failed" (0) to "excellent" (9).
The Minnesota bridge had a sufficiency rating of 50, with a deck score of 5 ("fair"), a superstructure score of 4 ("poor"), and a substructure rating of 6 ("satisfactory"). The low superstructure rating made it a structurally deficient bridge.
In Southeastern Pennsylvania, four bridges have sufficiency ratings of 2, according to PennDot. They include: a bridge on Headquarters Road near Tinicum in upper Bucks County; a bridge on Clover Mill Road over Pickering Creek in Chester County; a bridge on Concord Road over an inactive rail line in Delaware County; and a massive bridge on DeKalb Pike in Montgomery County.
A PennDot spreadsheet gives the bridge ratings at http://go.philly.com/bridgelist
http://go.philly.com/rideon has a map of deficient, closed and posted bridges.EndText