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we analyzed records of more than 25,000 bridges in America’s 50 largest cities by population to find which cities have outdated infrastructure that needs to be repaired or replaced.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