At least a third of Missouri's bridges are in poor condition, but a windfall of federal and state dollars for infrastructure improvements should help the state begin making progress.
According to federal estimates, Missouri has more than 2,000 bridges in poor condition and 122 are in Mid-Missouri.
Of the 122 Mid-Missouri bridges in poor condition, 48 are owned by the state, 65 are owned by county governments and nine are products of local and municipal governments.
There are 14 bridges in poor condition in Cole County, according to the National Bridge Inventory (NBI) data, and five are owned by the state, five are owned by the county and four belong to the city.
With more than 10,200 users, the city-owned bridge on West Dunklin Street over Wears Creek was the most used bridge in poor condition before the city completed a $2.6 million replacement project in 2020.
Now, the most used bridge in poor condition is the U.S. 50/U.S. 63 bridge over the Moreau River, according to the NBI. Roughly 8,139 people travel across the bridge each day.
Deck and foundation appraisals indicate the bridge meets minimum tolerable conditions, but the bridge foundation is in critical condition because water from the Moreau River has eroded land around it. Additionally, the bridge transitions and guardrail ends don't meet current standards, according to the NBI Bridge Summary Report.
Last October, MoDOT awarded a nearly $1.2 million contract to rehabilitate three bridges along U.S. 50/U.S. 63, including the eastbound bridge over the Moreau River.
Set to be complete before the end of the year, work includes adding new expansion joints and a protective coating to bents and piers, pile repair, steel sandblasting, painting and new drain installation. The bridge, located 5 miles east of downtown Jefferson City, will remain open during repairs.
Eric Landwehr, Cole County director of public works, said two of the poor condition bridges owned by the county were replaced last year with federal funds -- one at Old Forge Road and one at High Point Road -- and another bridge on Hemstreet Road has been closed and is scheduled to be taken down in the near future.
"Generally speaking, our bridges are in pretty good shape," Landwehr said. "We've made a pretty good effort over the past 20-30 years to replace the really old one-lane truss bridges that you're used to seeing out in the rural areas."
The two remaining county bridges in poor condition include a box culvert along Friendship Road and the bridge on Tanner Bridge Road. Landwehr said the box culvert is scheduled to be replaced within the next five years, but it's not a "dire need" right now.
The Tanner Bridge Road bridge, which gets roughly 2,000 drivers a day, has a driving surface in poor condition, but the superstructure and substructure of the bridge is in better shape, Landwehr said.
"It's not in any kind of danger," he said. "There's no danger that it be there. It's not load-posted so there's no safety hazards with it."
He said the county is looking at potential ways to fund its maintenance, which will be at least $2 million, because it would take a lot of the public works budget to complete without outside help.
The bridge is eligible for federal funding, Landwehr said, so that's a potential avenue to replace it.
Historic funding for the department will help MoDOT and local governments complete similar projects throughout the state.
Missouri has more than 24,500 bridges, according to the National Bridge Inventory's data that counts state, county and locally owned bridges. Approximately 2,190 are in poor condition and nearly 12,500 are considered to be in fair condition. Only 40 percent are in good condition.
According to MoDOT, bridge conditions are categorized by criteria established by the Federal Highway Administration.
Bridges in good condition don't have any significant condition issues. Bridges in fair condition have moderate problems that may require minor maintenance. Bridges in poor condition have significant problems, according to the department, and require major rehabilitation or an entire replacement of the bridge. Unsafe bridges fall below poor condition and are often no longer in operation.
Missouri has the fifth most bridges in poor condition in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
MoDOT's data reports Missouri has roughly 10,399 bridges the state is responsible for -- 837 of which are in poor condition and more than 6,400 are in fair condition. Only about 30 percent of state-owned bridges are in good condition.
A total of 57 bridges are listed on MoDOT's High Priority Unfunded Needs list, which identifies about $7.5 billion in total transportation needs around the state that exist beyond the department's current budget. The department has estimated the total cost for addressing those 57 identified bridge needs to be $1.2 million.
However, a lack of funding has set the department behind on completing those projects.
"We try to make sure that we're doing the just-in-time work to get to bridges before they move from poor condition to unsafe and the same with roadways," McKenna said.
He said the state is now in the position to make progress on infrastructure improvements, not just maintain the minimum.
With a statewide gas tax increase of 2.5 cents per gallon taking effect last October -- and incrementally climbing to 12.5 cents per gallon by 2025, unless sidelined by lawmakers this session -- and federal investments flooding to the state, MoDOT Director Patrick McKenna said the state could begin addressing nearly 25 percent of the projects on its unfunded needs list over the next five years.
"Bridge conditions are one of the most significant financial conditional issues that we deal with," McKenna said.
He said if the state were to try to fix all of its bridges with weight restrictions or in poor condition, it would cost approximately $4.5 billion.
The state has made some progress on bridge improvements in recent years with Gov. Mike Parson's Focus on Bridges program to fix 250 bridges by 2024. The $432.2 million plan uses state dollars, federal grants and a state bond system.
With less than two years to go, McKenna said, the department is almost three quarters the way through the plan.
In addition to the major Buck O'Neil bridge in Kansas City and the Rocheport bridge project just west of Columbia on Interstate 70, McKenna said the department has also hired a contractor to design and build 31 bridges in northern Missouri by November 2023.
MoDOT received a $20.7 million federal grant to build the 31 bridges, which is part of a program called Fixing Access to Rural Missouri, and allocated $5.2 million of its own funds for the project.
He said the state is making progress on bridge conditions as nearly 100 bridges have been moved away from poor condition ratings over the past couple years.
With more funding coming to the department, he said, MoDOT will be injecting millions into bridge projects around the state.
Cities and counties also get funding from the gas tax, and Landwehr said Cole County's maintenance and operation budget would increase 25 percent after it is fully implemented in five years.
"And with that, what we hope to do is to put more money into bridge maintenance and preservation," Landwehr said. "As it stands now, we don't have enough funding on the maintenance side of things to be able to fully do what we want to do. We're trying, and we're doing the best we can with what we have, but it's hard to stretch the dollars."
In addition to steady revenues from the new fuel tax, Missouri is also receiving more than $484 million from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Act to improve highway bridges. The federal appropriation is distributed over five years and the state will receive almost $97 million in its first allocation.
The federal funds can be used to replace, rehabilitate, preserve, protect or build highway bridges in the state.
McKenna said the $484 million from the federal government should be enough to fix between 5-10 percent of the state's bridges in poor condition.
In its guidance to states, the U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration suggest they use federal appropriations for bridges owned by counties, cities, towns and other local agencies, "in proportion to the scale of each state's off-system bridge needs."
McKenna said the federal dollars are a great opportunity for the state to make progress on those local bridges and he looks forward to working on those projects.
Landwehr said Cole County could use some of those funds to speed up the timeline of projects like the replacement of the bridge along Tanner Bridge Road.
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None‘Poor’ bridges
Missouri has more than 2,000 bridges in poor condition and 122 are in Mid-Missouri, according to federal estimates. The number of Mid-Missouri bridges in poor condition and the counties where they are located are:
• Callaway County: 22
• Osage County: 21
• Boone County: 19
• Cole County: 14
• Moniteau County: 12
• Miller County: 11
• Morgan County: 11
• Gasconade County: 7
• Maries County: 5
SOURCE: 2020 National Bridge Inventory