U.S. Cities Face a Looming Bridge Crisis

The Sherman Minton Bridge is sitting quietly empty over the Ohio River. The bridge spans from Louisville, Kentucky to New Albany, Indiana, and while it’s estimated that the bridge typically carries about 55,000 cars every day, it carries none today. The bridge has been closed, abruptly and unexpectedly, after cracks were found in two of its supporting steel beams back in early September. Disaster averted. At least there.

A new report from Transportation for America shows that there are more than 70,000 structurally deficient bridges in the United States, which the federal government define as needing substantial repair or outright replacement. More than 18,000 of these structurally deficient bridges are concentrated in large metropolitan areas, like Louisville, and account for three-quarters of all bridge crossings on any given day. That’s about 210 million cars crossing damaged bridges in the country’s biggest cities every day.