Bridges

Summer 2024’s record heat is creating problems for transportation infrastructure, from roads to rails. New York’s Third Avenue Bridge, which swings open for ship traffic on the Harlem River, was stuck for hours after its metal expanded in the heat and it couldn’t close. Roads have buckled on hot days in several states, including Washington and Wisconsin. Amtrak warned passengers to prepare for heat-related problems hours before a daylong outage between New York and New Jersey; the risks to power lines and rails during high temperatures are a growing source of delays for the train system. It doesn’t help that the worsening heat is hitting a U.S. infrastructure system that’s already in trouble. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave U.S. infrastructure an overall grade of C- in its latest national Infrastructure Report Card, released in 2021. While there has been some improvement – about 7.5% of U.S. bridges were in poor condition, compar...

A container ship rammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore around 1:30 a.m. on March 26, 2024, causing a portion of the bridge to collapse into Baltimore Harbor. Officials called the event a mass casualty and were searching for people in the waters of the busy port. This event occurred less than a year after a portion of Interstate 95 collapsed in north Philadelphia during a truck fire. That disaster was initially expected to snarl traffic for months, but a temporary six-lane roadway was constructed in 12 days to serve motorists while a permanent overpass was rebuilt. U.S. cities often face similar challenges when routine wear and tear, natural disasters or major accidents damage roads and bridges. Transportation engineer Lee D. Han explains how planners, transit agencies and city governments anticipate and manage these disruptions. How do agencies plan for disruptions like this? Planning is a central mission for state and metropolitan transportation agencies. T...