Dive Brief:
- The Delaware Department of Transportation will pay nearly $500,000 to a new construction company to raise a five-year-old Newport, DE, bridge 6 inches this summer in order to correct a mistake made during its original construction, according to The News Journal.
- Rail transportation company CSX Corporation owns the tracks that run underneath the $5 million bridge and would not sign off on a waiver accepting the height as is because it wants to start double-stacking cargo containers, which won't fit under the bridge unless it's raised.
- DelDOT bridge engineer Barry Benton said the error was most likely made when survey crews established clearance by measuring from the wrong points, but he added that the exact source of the mistake is unknown.
Dive Insight
Benton told The News Journal that surveyors doing this kind of work in the future for DelDOT must follow new procedures to eliminate the chance of similar mistakes occurring. He said the construction company that built the project holds no fault in the error. Benton also emphasized that this kind of engineering error was extremely rare.
Nearly 10% of the country's almost 600,000 bridges were considered structurally deficient in 2015, according to an American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) study. The Department of Transportation estimated that there is a $115 billion backlog for repairs but said it would take 21 years to complete the work at the current pace of investment in such infrastructure projects. ARTBA said it was most concerned about the integrity of older, heavily traveled bridges.
The fact that U.S. infrastructure is in need of comprehensive upgrades and repairs but woefully lacking in funding has been an ongoing concern. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued a report earlier this month that found the U.S. is risking the loss of 2.5 million jobs and $4 trillion in gross domestic product by not addressing the coming $1.44 trillion gap in infrastructure funding in the next 10 years. The ASCE said surface transportation has the greatest need for a funding infusion.
In another infrastructure-related report issued earlier this month, the Bipartisan Policy Center found that the private sector could be the long-awaited solution to the nation's infrastructure problems. The Center suggested that public-private partnerships could help to complete local, state and federal projects because they bring the expertise and access to financing that the private sector can more easily provide.