Are they safe?
By Larry Meyer - Argus Observer
Sunday, August 5, 2007 4:06 AM PDT
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| Eastbound traffic on Interstate 84 must use the right-hand lane over a new bridge, above Oak Road, north of Ontario, while crews work on replacing the bridge for the left-hand lane. Oregon Department of Transportation officials report inspections are conducted on Oregon bridges on a regular basis. |
ONTARIO - While there are many questions about the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis, Oregon Department of Transportation and other state officials say they have a strong bridge inspection agenda as well as an ongoing replacement and repair program in place across the state to trim the risk.
“It’s called a deck truss bridge,” ODOT Region 5 Public Information Officer Tom Strandberg said of the type of bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis.
“It had steel trusses which held up the deck,” he said.
There are three steel deck truss bridges in Eastern Oregon, including one in Malheur County — the U.S. Highway 95 bridge over the Owyhee River at Rome, he said.
The U.S. Highway 95 bridge over the Owyhee River at Rome was built in 1936 and was last inspected in 2005, he said.
The other two steel deck truss bridges are on U.S. Highway 395, Strandberg said.
So far, Strandberg said, those steel deck truss bridges appear to be operational.
“We don’t see any issues here,” he said.
However, Strandberg said ODOT officials will be following the investigation into the Minneapolis disaster and waiting for reports to determine if there is anything they may want to change.
Information he provided from ODOT stated Oregon has nine deck truss bridges on the interstate system and another 18 deck truss bridges on the state’s highways.
“We do regular inspections on our bridges,” Strandberg said, a statement that received a concurring comment from ODOT Region 5 South Area Manager Rena Cusma.
“We know our bridges,” Cusma said.
Cusma said ODOT acts promptly if a bridge appears to be in disrepair.
“We load limit. We get on them right away,” she said.
With the support of a funding package — dubbed the Oregon Transportation Investment Act, or OTIA — provided by the Oregon Legislature in 2003, ODOT is also in the midst of a program to design, repair or replace spans on major highways designated as major freight routes important to the economy of the state. The Oregon Transportation Investment Act III is providing more than $1.3 billion to repair or replace more than 300 state bridges by 2011.
One of the first routes to receive attention was U.S. Highway 20, which had several bridges between Vale and Burns identified as problems and were limited on how much weight they could handle, requiring some loads to be rerouted.
Those bridges were the first to be repaired or replaced so heavy truck traffic could switch to U.S. Highway 20, if necessary, while bridges along Interstate 84 were replaced or repaired. Several projects along Interstate 84 have been completed or are in various stages of completion.
The bridge repair program may not prevent all incidents and problems, but it is a proactive approach, Cusma said.
Oregon bridges are scheduled to be inspected at least once every two years, Ric Young, ODOT Maintenance District 14 manager, said, but they will be inspected more often if their conditions warrant it.
According to information provided by Strandberg, Oregon has 2,268 bridges, and 8 percent of them are structurally deficient.
That means 206 of them do not conform to standards enacted after the bridges were built. About 21 percent are functionally obsolete.
As of Wednesday 64 bridges on Oregon highways were weight restricted.
“I feel good about the way we have to address it in Oregon,” state Rep. Tom Butler, R-Ontario, said. “We’re ahead of other states in Oregon in working on this.”
willie wrote on Mar 9, 2010 2:02 PM: