US officials have launched a breakthrough £407 million renovation project to remove potentially dangerous bridges with safer alternations.
A 100-year-old bridge in Hood River, Oregon will be the first to be demolished as local authorities seek to upgrade the local bridge network.
Engineers have warned the old bridge is one of several across the United States to have been found “structurally deficient” and unable to handle the demands of modern traffic.
The new project will see a multi-modal bridge replace the old structure to allow for the traffic of both people and goods across the Hood River.
The newly-created Hood River-White Salmon Bridge Authority also expects the new infrastructure will improve safety standards.
The project’s website reads: “The design is a modern, wide, concrete bridge with one 12-foot lane in each direction with 8-foot shoulders. It will also include a 12-foot walking and biking path on its west side.
“It will accommodate all anticipated heavy loads and will have a 45 mph speed limit to safely blend with existing interchanges on both sides of the river.”
The new Hood River- White Salmon Bridge is one of dozens of new bridges due to be built across the country over the next five years.
Debate over the safety of older bridges in the US was reignited earlier this year following the deadly collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in March.
The bridge collapsed after the container ship Dali lost power and crashed into one of the bridge supports.
Six workers on the bridge at the time of the collision died and members of the Dali crew remained stuck on board for over seven weeks.
The crew had been unable to disembark due to visa restrictions and the ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the FBI.
The federal government’s national inventory’s latest data has shown that more than 1,200 bridges in the United States have been rated in poor condition for more than five consecutive years.
More than half of the 1,200 bridges have received a “poor” rating for over 10 years.
An estimate by the Department of Transport found it would take the federal government £215bn to fix the bridges.
The report found that Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York home around 40 percent of the most neglected bridges.
