Write Up:

The public has indicated that keeping Missouri’s existing roads and bridges in good condition should be one of the state’s highest priorities. The Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act established a 10% penalty threshold for states that, when exceeded, requires a state to focus money on bridges until they are back under 10%. The local system has 91 National Highway System (NHS) structures (five structurally deficient), and the MoDOT system has 3,582 NHS structures (145 structurally deficient). Missouri currently falls below the penalty threshold with the statewide structurally deficient deck area at 6.5%. This is due to the continued focus on major bridges when funding is available, as well as the increasing focus on poor condition bridges in the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program.

Statewide, this measure is also heavily influenced by major bridges with one structure having the ability to impact this measure +/- 0.5%. From 2021 to 2022, there was a decrease in the statewide percentage of structurally deficient deck area on the NHS. This change was heavily influenced by the Rocheport and Buck O’Neil design-build projects, which added six major-length bridges to the inventory and by a new bridge being built in the Southwest District. In the St. Louis District, the Illinois Department of Transportation completed repairs on the Martin Luther King River Bridge, bringing it out of the poor status and MoDOT completed repairs on one of the double decker bridges in St. Louis, also bringing it out of poor status. The number of bridges on the NHS has stabilized with very small changes from year to year. Ohio has been selected for comparison because it has similar demographics, geography and weather conditions. There are 10,436 total state highway bridges in Ohio with 4,996 structures on the NHS.

Purpose of the Measure:

This measure tracks the percent of structurally deficient deck area for bridges on the NHS.

Measurement and Data Collection:

The NHS is defined by federal law and consists of all roadways functionally classified as principal arterials as well as some routes that serve as major connections to multimodal freight-type facilities and some locally owned roadways. The FAST Act requires states to track the structurally deficient deck area on the NHS. Historically, the term structurally deficient defined a group of bridges that were in bad condition or had insufficient load capacity when compared to modern design standards. With the implementation of the FAST Act, this definition was changed and this measure reflects that change. The FAST Act has a penalty threshold that requires a state to take certain actions whenever the percentage of structurally deficient deck area within a state exceeds 10%. The chart reflects keeping the percentage below 10% as the target.