An Oregon Department of Transportation task force says the state needs to immediately repair cracked bridges on vital north-south and east-west routes.

The Seattle Times reports that the Bridge Strategy Task Force believes the state should renovate complete routes across the state, rather than the current approach of fixing the worst bridges individually. But it doesn’t make sense to repair one span only to leave trucks facing other unusable bridges on the same route, said the director of the task force.
The task force recommends replacing 51 bridges along Interstate 84 and U.S. 97 as the first phase of a multi-phase plan. The second phase would replace 155 bridges along Interstate 5.
Nearly 500 state-owned bridges have some degree of cracking, and more than 300 of those are candidates for repair or replacement. Most were built in the late 1940s and early 1960s and can’t handle the speed and weight of today’s trucks. At least 30 bridges on major shipping routes have load restrictions and detours – some detours are as long as 120 miles.