St. Paul, Minn. – State highway officials around the country want the government to stop scaring the public by using dire-sounding phrases such as “structurally deficient” and “fracture critical” to describe bridges in need of repairs.
In interviews and government documents obtained by The Associated Press, some engineers say the terms are making America’s bridges sound shakier than they really are, and they would prefer less-alarming phrases, or perhaps a “Health Index” for the nation’s spans.
The issue came up after the Minneapolis bridge collapse Aug. 1 that killed 13 people. The span, along with more than 73,000 other U.S. bridges, had been classified as structurally deficient, a term some engineers say sent shudders across the nation because it was widely misunderstood.
“People seem to think a bridge is within a hair’s breadth of collapse when they hear these terms,” Montana’s chief transportation engineer Loran Frazier vented in an e-mail survey of his peers after the Interstate 35W disaster.
At least one highway-safety watchdog group agreed that the terms are misleading and ought to be changed, and said there is little risk that new terminology would give the public a false sense of security.
Control over the labeling system rests with Congress and the Federal Highway Administration, part of the Transportation Department. The department would not comment directly on the terms used to classify bridges’ state of repair.
Such terminology is expected to be discussed when the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials holds its annual conference beginning today in Milwaukee. The association conducted the survey, and AP obtained the results as part of a government records request.
About 12 percent of the nation’s 607,363 bridges are classified as structurally deficient, according to 2006 FHA figures. The categories determine how federal money is doled out to states.
A bridge is typically labeled “structurally deficient” if regular inspections uncover significant deterioration such as advanced cracking in concrete or steel components.
The term “functionally obsolete” is applied to bridges that don’t meet current design standards, generally because of changing traffic demands. Bridges built decades ago, for instance, sometimes carry narrower shoulders or lower clearance than today’s structures.
“Fracture critical” is applied to bridges without multiple backup features, meaning that if one critical component failed, the entire structure could give way.
The Interstate 35W bridge was rated both structurally deficient and fracture critical. The cause of the disaster is still under investigation.
