SPOKANE, Wash. — The American Road and Transportation Builders Association released a list of the top most traveled structurally deficient bridges and one bridge in Spokane County and four in North Idaho made the list.
According to the report, for a bridge to qualify as structurally deficient it means that one of the key elements of the bridge is in poor or worse condition.
Of the 8,278 bridges in the state of Washington, 382 or 4.6 percent of bridges are classified as structurally deficient.
This is up from the 366 bridges that were previously classified as structurally deficient in a report in 2017.
The bridge in Spokane County is located on I-90 over Latah Creek. This bridge was built in 1963 and has an average daily crossing of 40,568.
Forty-two of the structurally deficient bridges in Washington state are on the Interstate Highway System.
The state has identified that a total of 6,080 bridges need repairs and that would be an estimated cost of $9.2 billion.
For Idaho state of the 4,482 bridges, 315 or 7.0 percent of bridges, are classified as structurally deficient.
This overall number has gone down from the previous number 341 structurally deficient bridges in 2017.
Eleven of the structurally deficient bridges in Idaho are on the Interstate Highway System.
The bridges in Idaho are located in Kootenai County on the I-90 WBL intersected at STC 7405 and Penn Ave. The bridge was built in 1960 and has around 11,250 daily crossings.
The other bridges are located in Shoshone County. Two are rural interstate bridges located at I-90 over Elizabeth Park Road both westbound and eastbound. The bridges were built in 1969 and has 6,000 daily crossings in each direction.
The other is a rural major collector at STC 5764 Main Street over Pine Creek. It was built in 1967 and has 5,700 crossings a day.
Idaho has identified the need for repairs on 1,601 bridges and the cost to fix the bridges would cost an estimate of $1.1 billion.
Idaho ranks 29th in the nation in percent of structurally deficient bridges. Washington ranks 40th.
