Bridge Safety: Next Steps to Protect the Nation's Critical Infrastructure

Opening Statement By Chairman Bart Gordon

I want to welcome everyone to today’s hearing on Bridge Safety: Next Steps to Protect the Nation’s Critical Infrastructure.

We were all horrified by the images of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis last month, and Congress has begun moving to address the serious problems of deteriorating bridge infrastructure in the United States.

In my home state of Tennessee, 37 bridges were found to be deficient by a Road Improvement Survey in 2005. My colleagues on the Committee could all share similar statistics. Clearly, the disaster that struck Minnesota could have happened anywhere. This is a wakeup call that we need to be doing more to strengthen and secure our bridges now and for the long term.

While funding repairs is important and necessary, we cannot keep on with business as usual if we are to maintain a safe national inventory of nearly 600,000 bridges.

In the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2005 Infrastructure Report Card, they reported that it would cost upwards of $188 billion just to fix our Nation’s current structurally deficient bridges. There has to be a better, more efficient way. I’m hoping our witnesses today can shed some light on what that better way is.

The witnesses here today represent the federal government, state government, academia and industry. Each of these groups is working hard on the innovative research and development that will hopefully help us prevent these types of tragedies in the future. They are developing new materials for stronger decks, new engineering techniques for more resilient bridges, new technologies to help inspectors more accurately assess the condition of a bridge.

Of course, new technologies are only useful insofar as they are adopted by builders and inspectors. I hope to hear more about technology transfer programs, and what we can all do to make innovative technologies more accessible to the hardworking engineers and inspectors that need them.

Investing our resources wisely is the first step to ensuring that the American public crosses the Nation’s bridges confidently.

Witnesses

Panel

1 - Mr. Dennis Judycki
Associate Administrator, Research, Development and Technology Director, Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center Federal Highway Administration, Department of Tr
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2 - Mr. Benjamin Tang
Principal Bridge Engineer, Office of Bridge Technology Federal Highway Administration Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration Department of

4 - Dr. Kevin Womack
Director, Utah Transportation Center Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Utah State University Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Utah St
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5 - Mr. Mark Bernhardt
Director of Facility Inspection Burgess & Niple Burgess & Niple
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3 - Mr. Harry Lee James
Deputy Executive Director/Chief Engineer Mississippi Department of Transportation Mississippi Department of Transportation
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