Could bridge accident be warning sign for Chicago area?

The eight-lane bridge that dropped into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis serves as a warning sign for the Chicago region, experts say.

For years Chicago area motorists and engineers have been playing a deadly waiting game: pushing off repairs on hundreds of questionable bridges.

In the six-county region, 340 of 4,692 bridges were labeled as "structurally deficient," meaning they need extra monitoring and repairs to maintain stability, a Daily Herald analysis of the latest available inspection reports has found. Plus, 725 bridges were so old their lanes were not wide enough to handle regular traffic, making them "functionally obsolete," the records show.

"We've been on borrowed time for a decade," says Joseph Schwieterman, director of DePaul University's Chaddick Institute of Metropolitan Development. "Now, matters have come to a crisis point."

The number of bridges needing quick repair is also on the rise. About 8 percent of 29,903 bridges in Illinois were found to be unacceptably maintained in 2003, according to state data. This year, that figure reached 10 percent.

Like the 321 Chicago area bridges singled out for repairs, the 40-year-old Minneapolis bridge that fell Wednesday was labeled structurally deficient by inspectors in 2005. Investigators continue to probe what exactly caused the catastrophic failure.

Poor bridge quality is a national issue, experts say, with 155,000 bridges being deemed structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

In Illinois, the number of deteriorating bridges has been known for years but the Minneapolis disaster prodded public officials to action.

On Thursday, Gov. Rod Blagojevich ordered inspectors to take another look at bridges throughout the state, starting with steel truss bridges that handle high volumes of traffic over rivers. No bridges in the Chicago area are of the same type as the one that fell in Minneapolis, but southern Illinois is home to about six.

Still, Illinois Department of Transportation officials, who oversee most of the largest bridges, are quick to point out a structurally deficient bridge isn't unsafe.

"We don't consider structurally deficient to mean the bridge is in imminent danger of collapse," said Sarah Wilson, bridge maintenance engineer for the Chicago area.

Such bridges are put on priority lists for repairs and receive special checks every two years. Newer bridges get inspected every four years. The inspection schedule is in line with federal standards.

Experts say most aging bridges needing repair are in rural areas carrying low levels of traffic, but the Daily Herald analysis found several in the suburbs that thousands of drivers traverse. They include bridges in Long Grove, Naperville, Wheaton and Arlington Heights. Because the inspection reports are from late 2006 at the earliest, it remained unclear Thursday what plans state officials had for repairs and whether work had already been done.

Tollway officials said all of their expansive bridges get repairs within a year of problems being identified. Agency spokeswoman Joelle McGinnis said all the bridges also are reinforced with multiple steel beams so they are not susceptible to collapse from a single structural failure.

If inspectors notice a structurally deficient bridge has slipped into a danger zone, state officials will either reduce the weight of trucks allowed on it, cut the number of lanes or shut the route down. County, township and municipality officials employ the same tactics.

Having to use such safety measures is not uncommon in some areas.

For example, McHenry County oversees at least 11 bridges that have reached a point where lower weight limits must be enforced for safety.

"We have a substantial number of bridges that are going to be needing repair soon or over the next 10 years," said Jeff Young, a county transportation engineer. "We just don't have all the money at this time."

Experts agree the number of bad bridges is an outgrowth of a lack of money. The state hasn't made a new road and bridge improvement investment in more than five years, and both lawmakers and policy advisers Thursday pushed for more funding.

"This happened in another state and was another situation, but it is a smoking gun on the issue," said George Ranney, president of the civic-planning organization Metropolis 2020. "We think this is a real signal to the General Assembly and the governor."

Lawmakers Thursday urged passage of a public works measure that would provide $1.8 billion for bridge reconstruction statewide over the next five years. Considering 4,715 bridges statewide are structurally deficient, the heap of cash in the measure may not put a big dent in the backlog of repairs.

Meanwhile, at least one expert thinks the state could do more to monitor structurally deficient bridges as the money is held up. Farhad Ansari, head of the University of Chicago's civil engineering department, said sensors can be placed on high-traffic bridges known to have structural issues to constantly monitor their safety.

Wilson said IDOT has looked at the rather new technology and is still reviewing it.

Ansari, however, sees nothing wholly unsafe about current practices or the number of structurally deficient bridges in the Chicago area.

"I would drive on them," he said. "I don't think these people would go on and let the traveling public drive on bridges they know are going to fail."