STATE'S SUBSTANDARD BRIDGES DECLINE IN NUMBER

In 1990, Missouri had more than 13,000 substandard bridges. Five years later, the number had fallen to under 10,000.

Fueled by gas-tax hikes, the state has made strides to bridge the gap by repairing and replacing deficient bridges, said Roger Schwartze, a bridge maintenance engineer for the state.

"That doesn't mean we don't have a long way to go, but we are at least headed in the right direction," said Schwartze, who works for the Missouri Highways and Transportation Department in Jefferson City.

Missouri was tied with New Jersey for the sixth worst-maintained bridges in the nation, a 1995 U.S. Department of Transportation report showed.

New York topped the list with 63 percent of its bridges listed as substandard.

The report was based on 1994 data, state highways officials said.

It concluded that 10,533 county, city and state bridges, 46 percent of the state's spans, needed to be repaired or replaced.

Schwartze said that was an improvement over 1990 when Missouri had the second most deficient bridges in the nation.

Southeast Missouri has its share of deficient bridges too.

The highways department reported 42 percent of the spans in a 14-county area of Southeast Missouri were deficient in 1995.

State highway officials said Missouri has about 23,000 bridges, the sixth highest total of any state.

There are more than 3,100 bridges in Southeast Missouri, many of them on county roads.

"There are a lot of drainage ditches in this area," said Steve Duke, an engineer with the District 10 highway office in Sikeston.

"When you have ditches, you have to have bridges across them," he said.

The American Automobile Association contends that the nation's roads and bridges are decaying because the federal government isn't spending enough to adequately maintain them.

"The Federal Highway Administration estimates it needs $53 billion a year just to maintain current road and bridge conditions and $72 billion a year to make improvements," said Robert Darbelnet, AAA president.

Current annual spending is only $35 billion, a virtual guarantee that the system will get worse, he said.

But Missouri highways officials said that deficient bridges aren't unsafe.

Substandard bridges are those that are functionally obsolete or structurally deficient.

Functionally obsolete bridges are those that are too narrow or the approach to the span has a bad curve, or the channel isn't adequate to handle major floods.

Structurally deficient bridges are those that are in poor condition or whose designs weren't adequate to handle an 80,000-pound truck load.

The Mississippi River Bridge at Cape Girardeau is structurally deficient, Schwartze said. "It is posted with a load limit," he said.

Construction soon will begin on a new span over the river that will cost $85-$90 million, much of that federal money. Missouri and Illinois also will share in the cost.

"When you make a commitment to that bridge, it means there are a lot of little bridges that are going to have to wait until there are some more resources," he said.

Missouri spends more than $10 million a year on routine maintenance and repairs to the 9,000 bridges on state routes.

The funding comes from the gasoline tax. The state, cities and counties split the tax revenue.

Missouri has a 17-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax, as does Oklahoma. All of the other surrounding states have higher gasoline taxes.

"Certainly if we had more funding available, we could do more in bridges," said Schwartze.

Duke said many bridges in Southeast Missouri are restricted to loads between 3 tons and 23 tons.

In District 10 in Southeast Missouri, the state highways department inspects all bridges.

State bridges are inspected annually and city and county bridges every two years.

If a bridge can't hold 3 tons or 6,000 pounds, it could collapse under the weight of automobile traffic.

"If it was our bridge, we would close it," said Duke. "If it was a county bridge, we would recommend they close it until repairs were made."

A bridge over Crooked Creek at Leopold in Bollinger County was closed some fours ago because it was unsafe.

The truss bridge, dating back to around 1906, is being replaced with a 23-foot-wide concrete deck structure.

The state of Missouri and its counties receive about $81 million a year in federal highway money to replace bridges. Eighty percent of the money is used on state projects and 20 percent by the counties.

But many counties get so little money that it takes them several years to accumulate enough money to replace one bridge, Duke said.