Last modified: Friday, August 3, 2007 1:19 AM EDT The Newport Ave bridge in South Attleboro is showing signs of wear. The bridge spans the MBTA commuter rail. (Staff photo by MARK STOCKWELL) Area bridges prompt worry BY RICK FOSTER SUN CHRONICLE STAFF For state Rep. Betty Poirier, news of the deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis seemed like the return of an old but recurring nightmare. For years, Poirier fought for major repairs to the Kelley Boulevard Bridge in North Attleboro, haunted by fears that falling chunks of concrete from the deteriorating span might eventually lead to a tragic highway accident. The state eventually rebuilt the doddering bridge, after first deploying netting designed to catch debris. "That was the first thing I thought of," Poirier said when she learned of the Minneapolis catastrophe in which a highway bridge collapsed during rush hour Wednesday, hurling an estimated 50 vehicles into the Mississippi River and onto its banks. Poirier, R-North Attleboro, who credited "beginners luck" in helping her to convince state officials to fix the Kelley Boulevard Bridge, said she's equally worried about other Massachusetts roads and bridges which many engineers and planning officials say rank among the worst in the nation. "Our infrastructure needs a lot of repair," Poirier said. "A lot of our bridges are 50 years old or more. We need to pay more attention to maintenance." Other area legislators share that concern. Matt Moore, director of budget and policy for state Sen. James Timilty, said that in light of the tragedy and a lack of maintenance funds, Timilty believes it is "critical" to re-examine the state's commitment to keeping roads and bridges in good repair. Although state highway officials don't believe there's any danger of an imminent bridge collapse in Massachusetts, many legislators, highway advocates and urban planners agree with Poirier. With a bumper crop of "baby boom" bridges built during the 1950s and '60s showing signs of age and a shortage of funds to maintain and repair them, some say the Minnesota collapse should raise a red flag. "The tragedy in Minneapolis should be a wakeup call not only to the risks to our economy, but to public safety that come with neglecting our transportation infrastructure," said Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. Widmer is a member of the state Transportation Finance Commission, which issued a report in March warning of the imminent need to for repairs and upkeep of hundreds of state spans, including more than 500 categorized as either structurally deficient or "functionally obsolete." Bridges classed as structurally deficient are not necessarily about to collapse, but are either closed to traffic or have weight limits imposed. The commission, citing figures provided by the Massachusetts Highway Department, said a minimum of $260 million is needed this year to begin addressing troubled bridges. The state has never spent more than $170 million a year for that purpose, according to the report. Massachusetts is scarcely a bridge engineer's paradise. In periodic surveys, the state's road and bridge systems are consistently ranked among the nation's worst. More than 60 percent of the state's bridges are more than 45 years old, according to a report by the Massachusetts Infrastructure Investment Coalition, which estimated that 385 of the state's 1,288 interstate highway bridges - about 30 percent - will fall into the structurally deficient classification in the next six years. Major causes of the Bay State's growing bridge crisis include deficient repair budgets, skyrocketing material prices and a huge crop of bridges built during the interstate highway expansion of the 1950s and '60s that are now deteriorating. According to a 2005 report by the Massachusetts Infrastructure Investment Coalition, a total of 1,857 bridges were built between 1950 and 1969 - fully 40 percent of all bridges ever constructed in the Bay State. Those bridges, which include the Kelley Boulevard span, increasingly are showing wear and tear. Bridges are closely monitored by state inspectors to ensure they are safe for traffic, said Malek Al-Khatib, a bridge engineer for H. W. Lochner. And as bridges age, the frequency of inspections increases. If problems are found, bridges can be closed or restricted to vehicles of certain maximum weights. Frequent inspections make it less unlikely a major bridge would fail without warning. "It's unlikely, but there's no guarantee of it," Al-Khatib said. Besides normal aging, a major factor in bridge deterioration is the volume of traffic and weight, which tends to increase over time. On major interstate routes through the Attleboros, traffic volumes and the number of heavy trucks have increased by tens of thousands per day since the bridges were built. The challenge of fixing and maintaining bridges is literally a matter of time and money, said Roland Hebert with the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District, with encompasses much of the Attleboro area. With revenues and expenditures tight, the state increasingly is having trouble keeping pace with burgeoning maintenance costs. And as maintenance lags, "we're falling behind," Hebert said. "The amount of funds Mass Highway gets from the state hasn't been keeping up with the rate of deterioration of the bridges," he said. And with the cost of energy and construction materials climbing, Hebert said, money spent for fuel and bridge components only goes about half as far as it did only four years ago. The state has plans to repair a number of bridges in Bristol County over the next few years, Hebert said, including the crumbling Newport Avenue Bridge that spans commuter rail tracks in South Attleboro. That project is expected to cost $12 million and is scheduled to be advertised for bid this year. But there are at least a dozen other projects already in the design stage that have not yet received funding, Hebert said. Beyond rising costs, however, a major hurdle to maintaining bridges is what some officials describe as a systemic failure to invest in maintenance. "We don't like to spend money on maintenance because it's not sexy," said Ilyas Bhatti, an Attleboro engineering consultant and former MDC commissioner. "When you finish, there's no ribbon cutting." Bhatti, who said he has advocated for years for better maintenance of roads and bridges, called the failure to keep up roads and bridges part of a "national crisis." "There's no excuse for letting bridges fall into the category of structurally deficient," he said.