300+ Kentuckiana bridges deficient

More than 300 bridges and overpasses in Louisville and surrounding counties, including Southern Indiana, are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, according to data the states' transportation departments submitted to the Federal Highway Administration last year.

Kentucky and Indiana transportation officials maintain that all the bridges are safe for public use.

"If they weren't, we would close them down," said Ryan Watts, a Kentucky Transportation Cabinet spokesman, citing Indiana's 2011 decision to close the Sherman Minton Bridge across the Ohio River after cracks were found in two steel support beams, causing a prolonged traffic headache in the region.

Will Wingfield, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation, echoed Watts, noting that all bridges on public roads are required to be inspected from an arm's length at least once every two years.

Map: Structurally deficient bridges in Ky, Ind

"Our bridge inspectors do not consider any of these bridges unsafe for the public," he said.

But in some cases, structures do fall, as was the case when a "structurally deficient" span on Cooper Chapel Road fell into a creek in southern Louisville eight years ago. Fortunately, nobody was harmed in that incident, said Metro Councilman James Peden, whose district includes the century-old structure that was replaced with a new bridge.

"It's crazy how many (poorly rated bridges) there are out there and how dangerous they are," Peden said.

The latest collapse in Kentucky happened Feb. 13, Watts said, when a structurally deficient bridge fell in Madison County after a 30-ton truck drove over the span, although there were signs posted noting its limit was 17 tons. State transportation officials say they don't know of any other collapses in the Louisville area over the last decade.

If a bridge has been deemed structurally deficient, it means it is in poor condition. Roughly 8,500 bridges and overpasses in Indiana and Kentucky had insufficient ratings, according to the 2014 data submitted to the Federal Highway Administration, the most recent available.

Among the worst of the 170 Jefferson County bridges that fell into that category were the downtown Interstate 65 ramps to I-64, as well as four I-64 spans over River Road or Witherspoon Street, which are traversed by more than 146,000 vehicles a day.

Those downtown spans as well as bridges in poor condition across the river in Jeffersonville — U.S. 31 over 10th Street, I-65 over 10th Street, and I-65 over Court Avenue — are being replaced as part of the $2.3 billion Ohio River Bridges Project. Work there has required shifting traffic lanes, which has increased commuter detours and delays.

Ranking the bridges

Kentucky and Indiana use different methods for determining which bridges they plan to replace or repair using federal funds.

Kentucky transportation officials still prioritize projects based on bridges with the lowest overall "sufficiency rating," a certain percentage from zero to 100 percent.

For example, the I-65 ramps to I-64, mentioned above, and the I-64 spans over River Road and Witherspoon were all rated at 48 percent.

The state-owned structure with the lowest overall sufficiency rating in Jefferson County — 18.7 percent — is a narrow bridge on Blue Lick Road built in 1950, which carries about 12,000 vehicles each day over a creek just southwest of Preston Highway near Southern High School, according to traffic counts from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.

There were more than 160 structures in the neighboring Kentucky counties of Bullitt, Oldham and Shelby and the Southern Indiana counties of Clark, Floyd and Harrison counties that fell into the deficient or obsolete categories, according to the 2014 data.

In Clark and Floyd counties, there are 22 bridges whose parts received "poor" ratings.

Some of the lowest-rated spans in Clark and Floyd included structures on Utica-Sellersburg Road over Lentzier Creek, Old Ind. 60 over Sinking Fork, Spring Street over Pleasant Run, Ind. 3 over Pleasant Run, Ind. 403 over Silver Creek, Ind. 60 over Persimmon Run and U.S. 150 over Richland Creek.

According to federal guidelines, bridges with an overall sufficiency rating of 50 percent or less may need to be replaced, while those with a sufficiency rating of 80 percent or less are eligible for rehabilitation.

Thirty-one structures in Jefferson County fall into the "may need to be replaced" category.

The structurally deficient bridges and overpasses are scattered through Louisville, including an Eastern Parkway span over Beargrass Creek that rated 46.8 percent, a Shawnee Expressway bridge over Northwestern Parkway with a 48 percent rating and the CSX railroad track overpass on Woodlawn Avenue that had among the worst in the city with a 10 percent rating.

Some spans with lower ratings are in better physical condition but lose points for being listed as "functionally obsolete," such as the 85-year-old Clark Memorial Bridge leading to Second Street downtown, which scored 50.6, and has no shoulders.

Its geometry — two narrow lanes and a low vertical clearance of 14.5 feet — also restricts the size of vehicles.

Its superstructure and substructure received "fair" grades, according to Kentucky transportation officials, who do have no plan to replace it anytime soon.

"The Clark is in good shape," Watts said. "It just has limitations on what type of traffic it can carry."

Funding repairs

Metro Councilwoman Madonna Flood told The Courier-Journal last year that local and state government budget tightening during the economic decline led to the latest delay of a project to widen Cooper Chapel Road, where the bridge collapsed just east of Preston Highway.

Kentucky and Indiana leaders have come to expect federal highway reimbursements for projects like this that equate to hundreds of millions of dollars each year — roughly half to three-quarters of each state's budgets for construction, land purchases and contracted maintenance on bridges and roadways.

But with the federal Highway Trust Fund set to run out of money due to the expiration of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act in May, reimbursements for states and cities trying to plan other bridge, road or transit improvements may be delayed.

Chuck Wolfe, a spokesman for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, whose engineers inspect over 14,000 bridges at least every two years said losing the federal aid would be a serious matter.

"The states pay up front and depend on reimbursement," he said, so a loss of funding would severely hamper the state budgets.

Last year, Congress avoided a similar crisis with the federal Highway Trust Fund by transferring other general fund money to it as it has done multiple times in recent years.

"With the spring construction season looming, the DOTs are looking at, 'Are we going to have the money?' " said David Goldberg, a spokesman for Transportation for America, a Washington D.C.-based organization of elected, business and community leaders from across the country.

Goldberg argues there needs to be funds dedicated for bridges or the money will be spent otherwise. He said Kentucky and Indiana are among the states that have been faced with "constant uncertainty" in recent years, causing transportation officials to make tough choices on which substandard structures to repair or replace.

Wingfield said the Moving Ahead for Progress law did away with a dedicated bridge funding program that used sufficiency ratings as criteria, meaning both paving and bridges projects are part of a larger funding pool.

Kentucky state Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, called the potential delay of federal money to fix bridges and improve other roads and other infrastructure "a crisis," one he believes will either require state legislators agreeing to raise gas taxes or finding alternate revenue.

Wayne himself has pushed for years for Blue Lick Road to be widened. The project was added then dropped from the state's long-term transportation plan for years because of funding issues before state bond money was earmarked in 2009 for the 2012 fiscal year.

Andrea Clifford, a Kentucky Transportation Cabinet spokeswoman, said the Louisville Water Co. and MSD are scheduled to begin relocating utilities this summer ahead of a $10.1 million state project to widen Blue Lick from Preston to the Snyder Freeway and replace the ditches with gutters. The first phase will include a section closer to Preston.

The project will also include a replacement of the county's lowest-rated bridge.

Wolfe said one thing is certain about Kentucky's construction program: It will be reduced without "dramatic intervention" at both the state and federal levels.

Unless the state General Assembly acts to stabilize the state motor-fuels tax, it likely will fall by 5.1 cents per gallon on April 1, Wolfe said, an additional loss to the 4.3 cents per gallon it already declined on Jan. 1. The result would be a road fund shortfall of $56.4 million in the current fiscal year that ends in June and $194.2 million that ends a year later.

And those shortfalls could be much worse if the Highway Trust Fund runs dry. According to a report from a federal report released this month called Beyond Traffic, the FHA estimates that about $77 billion in annual investment is needed to meet the needs of the federal-aid highway system.

"The timing could not be worse," Wolfe said.

Reporter Charlie White can be reached at (812) 949-4026 or on Twitter @c_write.

Deficient bridges

Here's a look at the number of deficient bridges and overpasses in the Louisville area, according to 2014 data submitted by Kentucky and Indiana to the Federal Highway Administration. These numbers have changed somewhat with new inspections, repairs and replacements since the April 1 deadline.

KENTUCKY Count No. Structurally Deficient No. Functionally Obsolete Total Deficient JEFFERSON 627 55 116 171 BULLITT 92 4 19 23 OLDHAM 67 7 7 14 SHELBY 132 15 19 34 STATE TOTALS 14,194 1,190 3,253 4,443 SOUTHERN INDIANA Count No. Structurally Deficient No. Functionally Obsolete Total Deficient CLARK 236 13 26 39 FLOYD 142 9 21 30 HARRISON 124 3 12 15 STATE TOTALS 19,019 1,902 2,201 4,103

Source: Federal Highway Administration 2014 data



Louisville's most deficient state bridges

Here are Louisville's most structurally deficient, state-owned bridges and overpasses, according to data from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. The numbers represent sufficiency ratings, average daily traffic and year built:

1. Blue Lick Road over Fish Pool Creek, 18.7 | 12,100 | 1950

2. Lime Kiln Lane at Interstate 71, 27.4 | 5,340 | 1967

3. Interstate 64 West ramp over River Road, 32 | 149,000 | 1965

4. Eastern Parkway over South Fork of Beargrass Creek, 46.8 | 20,000 | 1954

T5. Interstate 65 interchange with Interstate 64 ramps over River Road, 48 | 137,000 | 1964

T5. Interstate 64 East ramp over Witherspoon St., 48 | 149,000 | 1965

T5. Interstate 64 East ramp over Witherspoon St., 48 | 149,000 | 1963

T5. Interstate 64 West ramp over River Road, 48 | 149,000 | 1965

T5. Interstate 264 East over Northwestern Parkway, 48 | 23,550 | 1962

10. Manslick Road over Southern Ditch, 49 | 3,430 | 1936

Source: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet