By Staff
needs our attention
We motorists take bridges for granted.
Washington residents probably didn’t give the Brown Street bridge a second thought until the city closed it in late 2006 because it was unsafe. As bridges go, it’s not a large one, but motorists are still complaining because they must detour one block over and use the one on Charlotte Street or three blocks in the other direction and use Harvey Street.
The repair cost for that single bridge could be between $600,000 and $750,000 for a span that isn’t even 50 feet long. That’s one reason why the city hasn’t rushed to fix it. That project’s cost represents upwards of 13 cents on the city’s tax rate of 60 cents per $100 of property value.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation probably won’t be much help with the Brown Street bridge. The agency is facing a huge backlog of bridges of its own that need work.
The good news is eastern North Carolina doesn’t seem to have quite as many deficient bridges as other regions, but the bad news is it still has plenty — far more than DOT has funds to fix — and the next bridge that fails the safety test could be one that you use daily. Washington County has 12 bridges on the “bad” list, Martin County has 28 and Hyde County has 29.
Fifty of the 150 state-maintained bridges in Beaufort County are considered deficient, according to a report complained by AAA Carolina, a nonprofit group that lobbies for motorists. Right now, there are repairs under way on just one of them — the U.S. 17 span between Washington and Chocowinity. Two more repair projects are in the pipeline and scheduled to start this year. One is in the western portion of the county at the Pitt County line. The other passes over Blounts Creek near Pamlico Plantation.
Just those three projects will cost taxpayers more than $4 million.
There are other repairs on the way. Earlier this week, Belhaven officials were put on notice that DOT has plans to replace bridges there, too — and locals need to get used to the idea of taking detours while those projects go on.
DOT identifies bridges in need of repair through an inspection and analysis program. Each bridge is inspected every two years, and if a structure is determined to be in urgent need of repair, corrective action begins as soon as possible. None of North Carolina’s substandard bridges poses an immediate safety problem for motorists at this time. But one of them on the list, the U.S. Highway 17 bridge over Cherry Run Creek, is 86 years old and handles 9,500 cars a day, AAA says.
But are we really doing enough?
The city didn’t wait for the Brown Street bridge to fail before it closed it, and we’re sure DOT will be just as careful. But the problems caused by closing even one bridge can be felt in a community. What happens if we have to close four or five and there is no money to fix them?
A 21st Century Transportation Committee appointed by the state legislature is looking at ways to provide funding to deal with the state’s looming transportation infrastructure crisis. In addition to its bridge network, North Carolina’s roads are also in worse shape than any contiguous neighboring state, according to federal statistics cited by AAA Carolinas.
N.C. DOT spent $67 million on bridge and structure maintenance, enough last year to bring the costs to $200 million.
More money for maintenance is the way to go, according to David E. Parsons, president and CEO of AAA Carolinas.
So, the old adage is true. Pay us now or pay us later, but eventually bridges will have to take a higher priority when it comes to state funding.