Toll bridges in much worse shape than state bridges - FHWA data

This is bad news for the toll business in America. 41 percent of toll authority bridges around America are classed as "deficient" versus 23% of bridges on highways owned by state departments of transportation. Measured by area 42% of the bridge deck on toll roads and bridges is deficient versus 25% of the bridge deck on the state systems.
Those are the conclusions from crunching the numbers by state and ownership in the Excel spreadsheets of the FHWA's National Bridge Inventory for 2006 (published 2007).

[We are not entirely confident of the data since our computer got sluggish and then went into vacuum cleaner mode once today - feverishly processing away at such intensity that the cooling fans were blowing papers around and the office dog slunk away from the roar.]

We got Excel to add up state and local toll authorities bridges (cols 31, 32) in the FHWA inventory and computed the proportions of deficient bridges owned by toll authorities for all states and the US total, then did the same for the state DOTs (col 1), and organized them side by side - deleting out the states without toll authorities.

The US average quoted is therefore for all states, including those without any toll bridges to be deficient.

Source was http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/deficient.htm

We'd guessed the opposite

We started this because someone asked us if bridges on tollroads were in better shape than DOT bridges because of the more assured revenue stream from tolls. We said we guessed that would be the case, but better look it up.

Unless we've messed up, the statistics show the contrary of what we guessed - toll bridges are in worse shape, and the comparison isn't even close.

Here are the states where toll bridges and bridges on tollroads are more deficient than state DOT bridges: CA, DE, FL, IL, IN, KS, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OR, PA, RI, VA.

Toll bridges are less deficient than state bridges in: CO, TX, WV only.

That's 19 to 3 for the state DOTs.

NJ, FL are pretty close so maybe we should have another class called Draw for those two important states.

That would make it 17 to 3, drawn 2.

Okies in a class of their own

And there should be a class called Zany to accommodate Oklahoma. 30% of OK turnpike bridges by number are deficient versus 24% of state bridges but measured by square meters of bridge deck 32% of Okie state bridge is bad compared to 17% of turnpike bridge.

Oklahoma got left out.

We haven't looked separaetly at the two sources of deficiency - structural deficiency and functional obsolescence - which are summed to get the overall deficiency numbers.

We'll have a shot at that tomorrow and post on that. See followup:

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3404

Age?

Maybe the numbers are influenced by the age of facilities? The bulk of US tollroads and bridges go back to the years before the federal gas tax and the era of freeways, so they are on average older.

Maybe the state highway departments have a lot of itsy bitsy bridges on 2 lane roads that are so overbuilt they'll never be deficient? This may be apples and oranges?

Suggestions welcome. mailto:editor@tollroadsnews.com

It would be logical to divide bistate toll authorities' data between the two states. However FHWA assign state ownership by the address of the head office of the toll authority so PANYNJ's NY-NJ toll crossings are all classed NY, DRJTBA's NJ-PA bridges get assigned to PA, and the Philadelphia bridges of DRPA are NJ.

How they deal with international crossings which usually have head offices on both sides of the borders will have to remain a mystery.

see followup article here: http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3404

TOLLROADSnews 2008-02-18