17 Major US Bridges That Should Be Fixed Immediately

Max Nisen | May 24, 2013, 12:19 PM | 43,970 | AP

The collapse of a bridge carrying Interstate Highway 5 in Washington State on Thursday has reignited the debate about America's decaying infrastructure.

Although this collapse was apparently caused by a truck with an oversize load hitting a girder, the bridge was not in great condition to start.

The bridge was inspected last year and received a "sufficiency rating" of 47 out of 100, according to The Wall Street Journal. That's not great, but there are worse bridges out there.

It was not among the 11.5 percent of US bridges, crossed by an average of 282,672,680 vehicles daily, deemed "structurally deficient" by the Federal Highway Administration in 2011.

A rating of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete doesn't mean a bridge is necessarily near collapse. But all of them need work, and many hold up traffic on some of America's busiest roadways.

Using a report from Transportation for America, we have picked out 17 of the most heavily-trafficked, structurally deficient, and functionally obsolete bridges in America.

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