Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant recently released a proclamation ordering the state’s Department of Transportation to immediately close 83 locally owned bridges that are structurally deficient.
The bridges are located in 16 counties and will remain closed until they are compliant with National Bridge Inspection Standards and the Mississippi Office of State Aid Road Construction.
“These bridges have been deemed unsafe for the traveling public,” Bryant said. “Keeping them open constitutes an unnecessary risk to public safety, violates the corrective action plan agreed upon by the state and federal government and jeopardizes federal infrastructure funds Mississippi receives.”
Nationwide, 54,259 of 612,677 bridges are rated structurally deficient, including more than 1,800 interstate bridges, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. These bridges are crossed 174 million times daily.
Mississippi ranks in the top 10 states for structurally deficient bridges. Of the state’s 17,072 bridges, 2,008 or 11.8 percent were structurally deficient in 2017. This, however, is 4.3 percent less than the year before.
The state’s most traveled structurally deficient bridges are I-20 over the Mississippi River at the Mississippi-Louisiana state line in Warren County and U.S. 11 over Hobolochitto Creek in Pearl River County.