GAO: Highway Bridge Program Needs More Work

In a recent study, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said much work remains to be done on the federal Highway Bridge Program, as one in four bridges in the U.S. is either structurally deficient and needs repair or functionally obsolete.

GAO said that while the condition of the nation's bridges are improving somewhat, the DOT could take further actions to enhance the impact of federal investment. For fiscal year 2010, states were given about $7 billion through the Highway Bridge Program.

"The HBP does not fully align with GAO's principles for re-examining surface transportation programs in that the program lacks focus, performance measures, and fiscal sustainability," GAO's report said.

The Highway Bridge Program is not focused on a clearly identified national interest, GAO said. In other words, rather than improving deficient bridges, funding has been going towards preventive maintenance and other projects, which could include almost any bridge.

The program also lacks measures to link funding to performance and does not use new tools such as bridge management systems, the report found. The program also faces fiscal sustainability issues, with the nearly $30 billion in additional revenues added to the Highway Account since fiscal year 2008.

"Data indicate that the total number of deficient bridges has decreased over the past 12 years, even as the total number of bridges has increased, because of a reduction in the number of structurally deficient bridges," the report said. "However, the impact of the federal investment in the HBP is difficult to measure, in part because there are no comprehensive and complementary data for state and local bridge spending."

The data do not include state spending on bridges on local roads and local government spending on bridges.

In a testimony before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, Malcolm T. Kerley, chief engineer with the Virginia Department of Transportation, called for increased funding levels to keep bridges healthy. "We are facing a perfect storm regarding our bridges," he said. "A huge backlog of bridge needs remains."

According to Kerley, who testified on behalf of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, states are investing more in state dollars on bridges than is provided by the Highway Bridge Program.

Kerley called on Congress to preserve the health of all bridges through what he called "asset management strategies."

"States need federal funding to reduce the slippage of bridges into the 'structurally deficient' category," Kerley said. "And we all get more bang for our taxpayer buck by preserving a bridge early in its life rather than by having to completely replace it later on down the road. In order to accomplish this, states need to be able to fund a wider range of projects than just their lowest-rated bridges.

"Current law requires states to address the worse deficient bridges first, but this approach doesn't work," Kerley said. "If we had all the funding we needed, states could immediately reconstruct or rehabilitate all structurally deficient bridges - fixing the worst first while simultaneously investing to prevent an even larger number of bridges from deteriorating just enough to push them over the edge to structural deficiency. We call these 'cusp' bridges - those bridges which we can prevent from becoming structurally deficient."

In its report, GAO did not make any new recommendations, beyond those made in 2008. At that time, GAO called on the Secretary of Transportation to work with Congress to identify and define national goals for the Highway Bridge Program; develop and implement performance measures; identify and evaluate best tools and practices; and review and evaluate the program's funding mechanisms to align funding with performance.