40+ Minnesota bridges are more "deficient" than one that failed

List of deficient bridges

Federal officials said Thursday the investigation into the cause of the Interstate-35W bridge collapse could take a year or more. Officials intend to reconstruct the bridge, on its side, over time.

In the meantime, we are learning there may be more ?deficient? bridges around the state. Len Levine, a former transportation commissioner and now a national transportation consultant, says there are at least 1,000 bridges in Minnesota rated at the same level of ?structurally deficient? and tens of thousands nationally, the result of stressed-out budgets everywhere.

Levine believes folks are doing the best they have with what they've got. But, the issue may be that institutional standards are too low.

KARE 11 found a list of "deficient" bridges in this state. There are many considered to be in worse condition than the one that ended up in the water Wednesday night.

This bridge was a particular concern because it's the grand-daddy of them all. Before last night, it carried more traffic than any other bridge in the state, over 100,000 vehicles a day.

This bridge has been on the state radar for years, and was ranked 'structurally deficient' since 1990. They upped the number of inspections from every-other-year to every year in 1993.

Just six years ago, in a report by the University of Minnesota, they went so far as to say "fatigue cracking of the deck truss is not likely." They said: "no problem for the foreseeable future. And, "MnDOT does not need to prematurely replace this bridge?.because of fatigue cracking, avoiding the high costs associated with such large projects.?

Clearly those conclusions were wrong.

Are our standards too low? Did someone miss something on the inspections? Were they just trying to do too much with too little? All questions many people are asking. Answers aren't likely to come soon or easily.

The I-35 Bridge is what engineers call a "non-redundant structure". That means if a single part fails, the whole thing collapses.

Another irony today ? the governor actually used that word, redundancy, as he announced a host of independent investigations he's ordered.

?To parallel the work of state and federal investigations,? Pawlenty said, ?we want redundancy."

It would have been nice to have it on that 1967 bridge too.

Among the orders of the governor today is the immediate inspection of three other bridges in this state, built the same way the I-35 Bridge was. They include bridges in St. Cloud, near Sandstone and in Osceola. All of them cross rivers.

Also, there is a priority list of bridges in the state in need of replacement.

KARE 11 requested the list from MnDOT to learn which bridges they think were in even worse shape than the one that fell into the river. A MnDOT employee in the bridge maintenance division said that they consider that list non-public. When Governor Pawlenty was questioned about that today, he indicated the list will be made public.

By Rick Kupchella, KARE 11 News

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