Bridging the gap

As the nation approaches the August 1 anniversary of the Minneapolis I-35W Bridge tragedy, AASHTO released Bridging the Gap: Restoring and Rebuilding the Nation's Bridges, a new report that outlines the critical challenges ahead. The report discusses the aging of our nation's bridges, the increasing costs to repair or modernize the bridges, the growing traffic congestion cause by bottlenecks on our interstates, and the epidemic of rising construction costs. Bridging the Gap points out several solutions to these growing problems, including: increased investment in transportation at all levels of government; support for a wide range of revenue options such as tolls, tax increases, annual road user fees, bonds, or private investment; commitment to research and innovation; systematic maintenance to extend the life of bridges; and increased public awareness that bridges are vital links to business and communities. The report also includes a time table of the I-35W Bridge collapse and reconstruction from August 1, 2007 to June 19, 2008, statistics of U.S. bridges per state, age of U.S. bridge inventory chart, terms related to how bridge conditions are rated, and a brief description of the bridge disasters and recoveries in California (The MacArthur Maze, April 29, 2007), Missouri (Jefferson Street Bridge, Nov. 27, 2007), and Oklahoma (Interstate 40 Bridge, May 26, 2002)