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Of the more than 600,000 bridges in the U.S. 40 percent are 50 years or older.
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State departments of transportation, local agencies, and other bridge owners are facing
significant challenges in addressing the needs of their aging infrastructure.
Scott Neubauer: "We're getting a large number of bridges that are at the point where
they either need some maintenance or replacement and with limited funds we can't just replace
everything when we need to necessarily so preservation helps us maintain those structures
for a little bit longer life and lets us use our limited funds maybe more efficiently than we could otherwise."
Bridge preservation prevents, delays, or reduces deterioration of bridges, restores function,
keeps bridges in good or fair condition, and extends bridge service life.
Ping Lu: "We have to do something when the bridge condition
is still in good or fair condition rather than letting it deteriorate into poor condition
then we have to do a major rehab or replacement.
We have to do the cost-effective thing at the right time at the right place."
Preservation is not simply short-term fixes to bridges in poor condition.
Preservation, done properly, is a planned, cost-effective program to avert poor condition.
Bridge preservation is eligible for Federal funding however, routine maintenance is not.
Routine maintenance is work that is performed in reaction to an event or season such as
trash, snow, graffiti, and dead animal removal.
Raj Ailaney: "Our goal is to increase the longevity of our infrastructure.
Preservation activities, whether they are cyclic or condition-based, both help in extending
the life of a structure."
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All bridges are candidates for preservation.
A bridge in good condition is a candidate for cyclic preservation activity; fair condition
bridges may need both cyclic and condition-based activities; and poor condition bridges, if
it makes economic sense, may also be a candidate for condition-based preservation activity
or rehabilitation.
Cyclical activities include cleaning the bridge and its joints, flushing drains, and sealing
the deck, rails, cracks, and concrete.
Condition-based maintenance activities are performed on bridge components in response
to known defects.
There is a long list of activities.
What is considered most effective varies from state to state.
In Florida, it is common to install cathodic jackets to pilings.
Marco Bustamonte: "You chip all the bad concrete off of the pilings.
Install the jacket the way it is to this point.
Verify that the steel inside the piling is electrically continuous to itself and it has
to be for the system to work.
Then we verify that the external jacket that was installed is electrically continuous.
From this point is where we are now where I check that all the wiring to make sure that
it's not shorted."
Engineers say cathodic protection prolongs the life of the repair at least ten years
by introducing a small amount of electrical current to the steel.
"The corrosion won't get any better but it won't get any worse.
It will not corrode anymore."
Every State takes a different approach.
Danny Tullier: "Bridge preservation in Louisiana entails looking at bridges from a preventive
maintenance stand point to see how we can extend the service life of the bridges."
Louisiana began dedicating money to the program in 2006 with $3 million annually.
Since then, the program has grown to an average of $8 to 9 million a year.
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"So, we do that by looking at different types of repair that we can do on our bridges that
we've determined to be preventive maintenance and those things are concrete spall repair,
painting, deck joint replacements, relief joint replacements, and deck overlays."
Iowa has a similar size program.
"We'll do more deck patching, joint replacement, some approach pavement repair work, that type of thing
that's harder to get done with our normal program funds.
There are things that happen fairly quickly and you need to react to them and this money
helps us react to things a lot faster when we need to or do some of the deck washings
and things that we'd like to do that we can't otherwise do."
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Bridge preservation isn't just a focus for many States.
Local agencies are also making it a priority.
St. Claire County, Michigan, started with a two-man crew and a foreman in 2016.
DeWayne Rogers: "It was kind of a trial run for me for our first year.
Then our managing director liked what we were doing and wanted to take it to another level,
so we added two more guys to our crew."
The road commission even purchased an old military vehicle and retrofitted it to transport
the team and its equipment.
The five-member crew refurbishes 10 to 15 bridges a year using a budget of $350,000.
"You just start small, you find bridges
that might be 20 years old or 10 years old and depending
on what kind of surface concrete or asphalt, you kind of, once you go through your inspection
process you start seeing this deck has a few cracks in it, this would be a good
candidate to do a water proofing on."
While not all bridge preservation activities can be done in house, Rogers says using county
employees for some activities rather than contractors can allow for better control of
the budget and the schedule.
To do work in-house on Federal-aid projects, the work must first be found to be more cost
effective than competitive bidding.
Bill Hazelton: "Our boss said 'Get good at something,' he said, and 'get good at it and
just keep on doing it over and over again.'
So we're getting good at say four or five techniques and we'll just keep repeating
it and watch the results."
The St. Clair County Road Commission asked current employees to volunteer for the bridge
preservation team.
They then used internal resources to train them.
"Ask your crews if they want to do this work.
Most of them will try it.
Do they want to fill a pot hole every day?
No.
But they wouldn't mind painting a bridge deck or fixing something else that they can see
or point to that when they're driving home and say and show to their kids, 'I did that.'"
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Allocating funds and dedicating personnel are just two steps to creating a successful
bridge preservation program.
"I would think one of the things that a State should do is always look at what your surrounding
States are doing.
They usually have similar issues, similar weather patterns and traffic issues that you
have that you can gain a lot of information from what they're doing."
"Secondly, they would need to contact their local division office of FHWA to see what criteria that
would be helpful in establishing a program.
Lastly, I would get involved with an organization called Bridge Preservation Partnership
and you can find information about that partnership on the website; it's called tsp2.org"
The Federal Highway Administration has also created this bridge preservation guide.
The guide defines preservation terms and identifies commonly practiced bridge preservation activities.
It also provides guidance on establishing or improving an existing bridge preservation
program as part of an asset management program.
"If you look at the bridge condition trends for NHS bridges per NBI; since 1995, as our
inventory ages, the population of bridges in fair condition are increasing.
Bridge preservation is the only way, we can slow this increasing trend."
For more information, refer to the Bridge Preservation Guide found online at this web address.
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