Personal Injury &
Wrongful Death Lawyers
click for free consultation
click for free consultation

Which U.S. Cities Have the Worst Bridges?

Posted By Aguirre Law | March 12 2024 | Firm News

San Antonio is one of the largest cities in the United States, with thousands of people driving around the city every day. That means added wear and tear on infrastructure like roads and bridges, but what effect does that have on their condition over time?

To find out, we analyzed records of more than 25,000 bridges in America’s 50 largest cities by population to find which cities have outdated infrastructure that needs to be repaired or replaced.

KEY FINDINGS:

  • 4.7% of bridges in the 50 largest cities have at least one component rated in poor condition. That’s more than 50% lower than the nationwide rate of 10.8%.
  • San Antonio is one of five cities in the top 50 with less than 1% of bridges in poor condition, along with Houston; Austin; Tucson, Arizona; and Mesa, Arizona — the only city on the list without any poorly-rated bridges.
  • Seven of the top 50 cities have at least 10% of bridges in poor condition. The worst offender is Portland, Oregon — where nearly 40% of bridges receive poor grades.

Note: Seven of the top 50 cities were missing from the dataset — Albuquerque, Chicago, Indianapolis, Louisville, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Virginia Beach. Obviously, there are bridges in all seven, but their corresponding place codes were not present in the data.

The major cities whose bridges are in the worst condition are scattered across the country.

The bottom 10 large cities in terms of bridge condition are located in 10 different states all over the country, spanning all the way from Long Beach, California, to Boston.

But the worst offenders are the twin titans of the Pacific Northwest: Portland, Oregon, with 38% of bridges receiving poor ratings, and Seattle, where 22% of bridges score poorly. No other cities on the list even topped 15%.

The heavily populated cities with excellent bridges are much more clustered together.

Of the 50 cities we looked at, 10 stood out with less than 2% of bridges scoring poorly on their structural evaluation, and 9 of those cities were in Texas — the state with the lowest percentage of its bridges rating poorly — or Arizona.

The only major city in the top 10 from a different state is Tampa, with 1.8% of bridges rated as poor.

Which bridges in San Antonio were rated poorly?

Just nine bridges in San Antonio received low grades in their most recent inspections.

Two of those — bridges carrying West Nueva Street and Graham Street over San Pedro Creek — may not have actually been in need of repairs themselves, but were closed as part of the renovations in the San Pedro Creek Culture Park project.

Two others spanning the San Antonio River — Brackenridge Road in Brackenridge Park, and South Presa Street downtown — were deemed to have substandard load capacity and received a grade of 2, which means that while perhaps not at imminent risk of collapse, they should be prioritized for replacement in the future.

The remaining five bridges scored a 4 on their structural evaluation, indicating that they currently meet the requirements for continued operation, but that could change in future inspections.

Repairing and replacing these bridges will likely decrease the number of truck accidents and car accidents in San Antonio each year.

America’s 50 largest cities ranked by percentage of bridges in poor condition

Rank City Population Total bridges Percent of bridges in poor condition
1 Portland, OR 635,067 387 37.7%
2 Seattle, WA 749,256 81 22.2%
3 Philadelphia, PA 1,567,258 593 12.3%
4 Boston, MA 650,706 449 11.4%
5 New York, NY 8,335,897 1,462 10.9%
6 Long Beach, CA 451,307 196 10.2%
7 Colorado Springs, CO 486,248 299 10.0%
8 Minneapolis, MN 425,096 314 9.9%
9 Baltimore, MD 569,931 373 8.6%
10 Nashville, TN 683,622 755 7.8%
11 Fresno, CA 545,567 256 7.8%
12 Bakersfield, CA 410,647 195 7.7%
13 Kansas City, MO 509,297 638 7.7%
14 Raleigh, NC 476,587 318 7.2%
15 Sacramento, CA 528,001 283 6.7%
16 Oakland, CA 430,553 213 6.6%
17 Denver, CO 713,252 396 6.6%
18 Atlanta, GA 499,127 388 6.4%
19 San Francisco, CA 808,437 126 5.6%
20 Washington, DC 671,803 252 5.6%
21 Memphis, TN 621,056 675 5.5%
22 Detroit, MI 620,376 414 5.1%
23 Las Vegas, NV 656,274 583 4.6%
24 Milwaukee, WI 563,305 577 4.5%
25 San Jose, CA 971,233 366 4.4%
26 Miami, FL 449,514 345 4.3%
27 Wichita, KS 396,192 507 4.1%
28 Omaha, NE 485,153 326 4.0%
29 Jacksonville, FL 971,319 790 3.8%
30 Los Angeles, CA 3,822,238 1,221 3.7%
31 San Diego, CA 1,381,162 600 3.7%
32 Charlotte, NC 897,720 589 3.6%
33 Columbus, OH 907,971 496 2.0%
34 Tampa, FL 398,173 337 1.8%
35 Fort Worth, TX 956,709 1,205 1.2%
36 El Paso, TX 677,456 609 1.1%
37 Dallas, TX 1,299,544 1,544 1.1%
38 Phoenix, AZ 1,644,409 871 1.0%
39 Houston, TX 2,302,878 2,419 0.8%
40 San Antonio, TX 1,472,909 1,712 0.5%
41 Austin, TX 974,447 1,067 0.4%
42 Tucson, AZ 546,574 403 0.2%
43 Mesa, AZ 512,498 235 0.0%
NA Chicago, IL* 2,665,039 NA NA
NA Indianapolis, IN* 880,621 NA NA
NA Oklahoma City, OK* 694,800 NA NA
NA Louisville, KY* 624,444 NA NA
NA Albuquerque, NM* 561,008 NA NA
NA Virginia Beach, VA* 455,618 NA NA
NA Tulsa, OK* 411,867 NA NA

*Place codes for these cities were missing from the dataset.

Data source and methodology

Data for this analysis comes from the 2023 National Bridge Inventory, an annual survey conducted by the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Bridges and Structures.

We downloaded data on nearly 620,000 highway bridges in the United States and used place codes and city population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau to determine the percentage of bridges in the country’s 50 largest cities (not metropolitan areas) that were deemed to be in poor structural condition — including those that are currently closed for rehabilitation or replacement.

Each open bridge is rated on a scale from 2-9, with 9 as the best possible rating, while closed bridges receive a 0. A bridge is classified as being in poor condition if it receives a rating of 4 (“meets minimum tolerable limits to be left in place as is”) or below.

Request Free Consultation

"*" indicates required fields

*required fields