In the wake of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, a growing number of Americans are expressing concerns about the stability of bridges both in their communities and across the country, according to a just-released survey.
Polling more than 1,800 people, the survey site YouGov found that a sizable 37% defined the nature of bridges nationally as either bad or terrible, compared to only 17% who rated such structures as either good or great.
The numbers were a little bit less alarming when respondents were asked to grade bridge infrastructure in their own communities, perhaps suggesting that a personal familiarity with certain structure tempered the answers.
In this category, 25% rated their local bridges as either bad or terrible, while 36% regarded such structures as either good or great.
According to a narrative attached to the YouGov survey, residents of suburban areas were the “least likely to see problems with their community’s infrastructure,” with only 20% characterizing local bridges as bad or terrible.
A larger 27% of urban residents, however, thought their local bridges were in bad shape.
Indicative of the more common truck and long-distance vehicle use in rural areas, some 43% of residents in those areas judged their bridge infrastructure as bad or terrible.
The main spans of the Key Bridge in Baltimore swiftly broke and fell into the waters of the Patapsco River after being rammed by a Singapore-registered container ship on the afternoon of March 27.
At least six workers, part of a pothole patching crew on the bridge, fell into the river as a result of the crash and died.
While not a common occurrence, the last year has seen two significant bridge failures in the U.S.: the collapse of the northbound lanes of an Interstate 95 highway overpass in Philadelphia last June; and the collapse of a rail bridge crossing the Yellowstone River near Columbus, Montana, also in June.
In a greatly publicized survey conducted by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2021 it was noted that some 42% out of a total of 617,000 bridges in the U.S. were at least 50 years old, with 7.5% classified as being structurally deficient.
Perhaps not surprisingly, 47% of respondents to the YouGov survey said they were in favor of increasing federal spending for bridge and road projects, with 26% wanting to keep funding levels the same, and only 5% expressing opposition.
By Garry Boulard