Downtown Reno has about a third of Nevada's structurally deficient bridges

Downtown Reno is home to about a third of the bridges in Nevada that either need significant repairs or outright replacement.

Those four bridges span the Truckee River along Sierra Street, Arlington Avenue and Keystone Avenue, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data analyzed by the Reno Gazette Journal. They are considered structurally deficient, meaning they either need repairs or replacement.

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The problems facing infrastructure in the United States were made tragically clear again on Thursday when a footbridge under construction in Miami collapsed, killing several people.

In Nevada, plans are to replace the structurally deficient bridges along Arlington Avenue and Sierra Street in the next five to 10 years, said Theresa Jones, an associate civil engineer with the city of Reno.

The bridges, which were built more than 80 years ago, would cost about $25 million each to replace. Jones said there are no details about those plans just yet.

The city replaced the 110-year-old Virginia Street Bridge two years ago.

The Keystone Avenue bridge, built in 1966, is also too small for the amount of traffic that travels on it, Jones said. She said the Regional Transportation Commission considers the bridge a top priority.

Jones said just because the bridges are considered structurally deficient doesn't mean they're unsafe, though it does mean they need to be inspected annually and patched up.

“Structurally deficient means it has maintenance issues that have to be attended to, but those maintenance issues don’t pose a threat to public safety,” Jones said.

Where are the other structurally deficient bridges in Nevada? Check out this map:

Big picture: Nevada's bridges are in good shape

About 9 percent of the more than 614,000 bridges in the United States were considered "structurally deficient" in 2016, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

In Nevada? Roughly 1 percent of the state's bridges were considered structurally deficient in 2016, the latest data available.

There might be a good reason for that, too.

Of the state's 1,772 bridges, most were constructed after 1994.

Brian Duggan is the investigations and data editor for the Reno Gazette Journal. Email him at bduggan@rgj.com. Find him on Twitter @brianduggan.