Bridges: Did you know?
About 400 local bridges in Minnesota are defined as deficient by the federal government and targeted in the near future for replacement or rehabilitation by Mn/DOT, according to the August 16 Minneapolis Star Tribune.
A bridge is considered structurally deficient if it is in relatively poor condition or has insufficient load-carrying capacity. The insufficient load capacity could be due to the original design of an older bridge that used lighter design loads, or due to deterioration.
Modern agriculture, with wider and heavy equipment, is putting increased pressure on local bridges.
The I-35W bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River on August 1 was rated as “structurally deficient” in 2005 according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Bridge Inventory database.