Last week marked the fifth anniversary of the terrible collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis that killed 13 people and injured 145.
To keep the heat on politicians, New York City lawyer Barry LePatner, author of “Too Big to Fall,” has launched a Google map at http://www.SaveOurBridges.com showing the sites of 7,980 US bridges that are fracture-critical and structurally deficient.
Without significant repair or replacement, LePatner says these “will succumb to gravity, and every one of these bridges will fall over time.”
LePatner built his database around a 2009 Federal Highway Administration report that revealed that of 600,000 US bridges, 72,000 are rated “structurally deficient” and 18,000 are “fracture-critical,” while 7,980 fall into both categories.
The cost of repairing these most dangerous bridges is estimated at $30 billion to $60 billion. But LePatner wonders: why don’t those in charge of funding at least start fixing a few small ones that would only cost $1 million or so to make safe?
Locally, expensive fixes include: the Henry Hudson Bridge, which always seems to have construction work ongoing; portions of the elevated West Side Highway at 59th Street (remember, the southern portions were previously torn down, and this section is also supposed to be moved and “buried” under the Riverside South project); approaches to the Gowanus Expressway; and, of course, the dreaded Tappan Zee Bridge.
“In this political year, no one can go around and say our bridges are safe,” said LePatner. Indeed, at a Tappan Zee forum in Westchester in June, Gov. Cuomo’s secretary Larry Schwartz, who has been tasked with shepherding the construction of a new Hudson River bridge, warned the audience that the Tappan Zee is “the hold-your-breath bridge.”
